PLANT LIFE

Name: PLANT LIFE
Author: Pamela Duncan
ISBN: 0-385-33523-7

by Pamela Duncan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2003

Lovingly drawn, thoughtful characterization holds up despite the endless inventory of minutiae. A worthy second outing by...

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The travails and triumphs of rural southern women.

Russell, North Carolina, is the kind of small town that never changes—but Laurel Granger sure has. She isn’t sure how to tell her family that she split up with husband Scott in Las Vegas, or that she may not even want to stick around after Christmas. Truth is, she has no choice but to stay and find a job at the mill, like her mother, Pansy, and all her mother’s old friends: Idalene, Maxanne, Percilla, and Lottie May. Laurel isn’t exactly thrilled to be right back where she started from, although everyone seems to love her just the same. She ruminates over her marriage—how could Scott dump her for a stupid bleached blond named DeeDee?—and seeks answers in the past. Fortunately, no yearbook, no church program, no nothing is ever thrown away in Russell, and all are scrutinized in turn, their emotional charge duly noted. Laurel does a little snooping and discovers to her surprise that her mother, a talented artist, had planned to go to college, though she never mentioned it. A little more digging reveals that Maw Bert, Pansy’s mother, kept her at home until she married, even burning all of Pansy’s paintings. Laurel is appalled. Is she doomed to see her ambitions, her education, go up in smoke as well? Just what it is about this small town that keeps people here for generations? Alternate points of view are skillfully introduced as each of the five friends tells her story—as does Maw Bert, the redoubtable matriarch, who had her reasons for doing what she did. Laurel is thrilled to find that her mother’s artwork wasn’t destroyed after all, still glowing brightly despite the years of concealment under family photos in old frames.

Lovingly drawn, thoughtful characterization holds up despite the endless inventory of minutiae. A worthy second outing by the author of Moon Women (2001), though it has only the ghost of a plot.

Pub Date: April 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-385-33523-7

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.