A finely crafted portrayal of a society on the cusp.
A somber portrait of the deteriorating marriage of a white middle-aged couple beset by doubts and fears in post-apartheid Johannesburg, where the past still casts long shadows and the future is uncertain.
South African novelist Jooste (Like Water in Wild Places, 2000, etc.) also vividly evokes the present: an edgy time of flux, of waiting for new patterns to emerge and for life to assume some definable shape. Liberation’s euphoria has inevitably evaporated as whites adjust to the loss of privileges, security, and certainty, while blacks cope with generational tensions, lowered expectations, and crime. The plight of Julia and Douglas deftly mirrors their society’s dissatisfactions and disappointments. She has tried to be the perfect wife and mother, but he sees other women, and their runaway daughter takes drugs and refuses to visit. Meanwhile, Douglas is under pressure to appoint a black to the board of his construction company. Business is bad, he’s in debt, and he’s tired of fighting with his wife about her spending. As an embittered Julia decides to change her life, other characters connected to the central couple also face challenges. In London, Douglas’s first wife Rosalie, who went to prison for her politics and was then deported, is trying to cope with increasing memory loss. Michael, a wealthy Johannesburg entrepreneur who was once Rosalie’s lover, feels guilty for abandoning the struggle after her arrest. Wealthy Caroline, Julia’s best friend, copes with unwelcome change after her husband Gus is rendered comatose in a car accident; a developer wants to buy the family estate, and their son pressures her to sell. Gladstone, an aging African who works for Douglas, wants to live in the country, but his urban daughter objects. Matters come to a head as Julia plans a party for Rosalie, mistakenly rumored to be returning, and decisions are made that involve divorce, murder, and acceptance.
A finely crafted portrayal of a society on the cusp.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-60148-4
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Doubleday UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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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