Although oddly paced and occasionally quirky, this is both a skillful, empathetic tale and an affectionate portrait of a...
Set in Tasmania, an accomplished love story by British author Shakespeare (Snowleg, 2004, etc.).
Shakespeare’s perceptive, gently comic and lovingly visual novel charts the evolution of love in an out-of-the-way place—Wellington Point, population 327—where two people marked by tragedy meet. After Alex Dove’s farmer parents were killed there in a car accident when he was 11, he was brought up in England. Returning to Tasmania as an adult to close the farm down, he decides instead to stay. Merridy Bowman, in town to care for her dying father, is scarred by the unresolved mystery of her brother Hector’s disappearance when she was a child—an event which caused her to decide she would not allow herself to love again. But Alex’s courtship persuades her that love will come and she marries him. Initially happy, the couple starts to drift apart due to barrenness and the farm’s shaky finances, until Merridy saves the day by starting up a successful oyster business. One stormy night, Alex rescues a shipwrecked problem teenager, Kish, and the couple tames some of his violence, but when Merridy confuses him with Hector he smashes up their home. Then she falls pregnant and Alex thinks the baby is Kish’s. Separation follows, but Kish apologizes for the destruction and Alex chooses to accept and love the child as his own.
Although oddly paced and occasionally quirky, this is both a skillful, empathetic tale and an affectionate portrait of a place and its community.Pub Date: June 24, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-147470-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
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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