A crowded, buzzing canvas, and the draftsmanship is superb. But it seems less a satiric novel than a flattering court...
The latest from Coleridge (Streetsmart, 2001, etc.), Condé Nast U.K.’s editorial director, is a witty, nimbly plotted upper-crust soap opera, but one that favors glamour over substance.
1965: Eighteen-year-old Anthony, heir to a banking fortune, meets kohl-eyed and sultry teen adventuress Amanda at a party and is so smitten that he trails her to France, wrests her from a rival and marries her in Nice. Two years later, Amanda abandons Anthony and an infant daughter. He reluctantly divorces her and plights his troth to the child’s salt-of-the-earth nanny. A decade and two children later, that marriage implodes when Anthony sires another daughter by his acupuncturist. Soon he weds Dita, a chilly social climber. Thanks to the bank’s expansion into Asia, Anthony’s fortune grows, despite Dita’s squandering enormous sums on household opulence and the social whirl, and by 1995 Anthony is living comfortably at his family’s ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, surrounded by the detritus of his messy romantic life: five children, five stepchildren, a wife, three former wives or consorts. There comes, inevitably, a disastrous reversal, but everything is put right at the end. Anthony is well-meaning and likable, but readers may lose patience with his easy self-forgiveness and near-total lack of introspection—nor does it help that the narrator sometimes plays advocate for him.
A crowded, buzzing canvas, and the draftsmanship is superb. But it seems less a satiric novel than a flattering court portrait of an aristocrat who’s bought and paid for it.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36383-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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