Amusing story of a Masai tribe living in an Alabama doctor's backyard. Second-novelist Shulman (What? Dead Again?, 1980) also wrote the script for Doc Hollywood. Here, Shulman weaves two themes into one tale. The first is the spread of electronics even to a remote African village; the second shows the effect of primitive life on civilization when an African tribe moves itself to the States. Dr. Bud Pane and his gardener wife Gail take a vacation in the African bush, where Bud's instantly dragooned by medical nuns and finds himself drowned in work as he sews up a Masai warrior shredded by a lion. Adopted by the tribe, he begs them to allow him to take shining, 11-year-old Hope to Alabama, where surgery can save her rheumatic heart from its failing mitral valve. Bud passes through disgusting ceremonies and now bears his own spear and shield, so the tribe lets Hope go. When he and Gail fly home, he leaves his gold card with a travel agent to cover Hope's flight. Surprise, not only Hope but her medicine man, family, and many tribal members accompany her on the gold card to the doctor's home and set themselves up in his backyard, where they build mud huts in Gail's flower garden. The fun involves the tribal medicine man working in a modern hospital's emergency room and bringing his ancient medical wisdom to bear on the wounded. Also, Masai believe that they own all the cows on earth, and so begin herding local cows into Bud's backyard. The climax brings on Oprah Winfrey and Global News Network broadcasting from Hope's operating room and the Masai village in Africa both at once. Much funnier than it has any right to be, perhaps because Shulman somewhat restrains the ersatz uproar and totally stupid plot, much like those in Max Shulman's witless old squirrel-houses, Barefoot Boy with Cheek and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!
Pub Date: March 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10513-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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