A coming-of-age story with the potential to be something even more.
A naïve country girl learns the ways of the world in O’Connor’s debut work of fiction.
When, in 1976, her family is killed in a violent ambush, 16-year-old Sandy is left penniless and orphaned in Rhodesia. She relocates to Durban, South Africa, to live with her grandmother in the bustling, urban environment. Thus begins Sandy’s transition from naif to sophisticated young woman. Though she dreams of attending school to become an art teacher, Sandy finds employment at a candy shop to generate income. Her co-worker Mary offers a different kind of education, teaching Sandy the art of attracting a man. Thanks to her newfound skills and confidence, Sandy secures a job as a receptionist at the Leopard Lair Hotel. In between working the front desk, dealing with customer kerfuffles, and studying her South African matric, Sandy is introduced to the world of sex and the pleasures and pitfalls of having affairs. Though Sandy encounters a few bad eggs, the good doctor Fletcher comes to her aid from time to time. Too bad he’s married and off-limits…or is he? Sandy’s transition from child to adult, her sexual awakening, and her journey to find her place in life are the primary focuses of O’Connor’s narrative. The young woman shows some promising spunk—e.g., her inadvertent attendance at a swingers party and her refusal to have sex with an irritating hotel guest—though at times she is frustratingly shallow and one-dimensional. O’Connor’s story is set during a time of extreme political and racial turmoil, yet there’s little reflection on current events. Mary tells Sandy to imagine being married to a rich man—“You’d be well looked after”—and much of the narrative revolves around this goal. Anecdotes of outrageous hotel guests provide some of the more amusing aspects of the novel, which is at its best when glimpsing South African political dynamics, as when Granny refuses to let Sandy date a man who is an Afrikaner.
A coming-of-age story with the potential to be something even more.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4993-1308-6
Page Count: 186
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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