Tyree's debut is much longer than a YA novel, and far more vulgar, but the subject is pure teen: The ins and outs of dating matched up with a guide to fashion dos and don'ts. The further twist is that it's set in a largely black neighborhood of Philadelphia, where whites exist only as an excuse for some silly Afrocentric theorizing. At the heart of this morality tale is Tracy Ellison, a young girl whose adolescence and teenage years are depicted largely as a monotonous soap opera. The daughter of hardworking parents, Tracy lives in Germantown, a middle-class neighborhood, and does well in school. Her problems stem mainly from boys, and for most of her young life, she's truly boy-crazy. So much so, that this overlong narrative records in dull detail her years of flirting, courting, kissing, and having sex—``a game of choosing and chasing and dumping.'' By 13, she's tall, curvaceous, and cunning; she ``had to have whomever she wanted right away.'' That includes a wide range of eager young men, from the awkward and fumbling Bruce to the violent thief Timmy. With time, Tracy learns not to give it out without getting things in return, even though her behavior shocks her lifelong neighbor, Raheema, a studious girl who postpones her deflowering. What finally turns Tracy around, though, is the sad example of Raheema's older sister, who has become a crack whore. In this tightly ordered universe, bad living leads to addiction, unwanted pregnancy, jail, or death. Tracy also comes under the influence of some college girls who introduce her to the world of Kente cloth and the Minister Farrakhan. Tyree's shapeless docudrama seems written for an audience he intends to shock—why else would he pause so often (and so awkwardly) to translate slang terms that any watcher of Moesha would know? But for all its immoral behavior, it's a cautionary of the most heavy-handed sort: virtue rewarded; vice punished.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-82928-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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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