A thoughtful, observant, and often humorous tale about real connections.
In this literary novel, family secrets, friendship, and the resilience of love play out in a dinner party between two couples.
As this story opens in London, Eva Polk (née Harper) reacts with glee to news of a relative’s death, which exposes a big secret she’s kept from her husband of 10 years, Adam. The reasons are explained in the following chapters tracing Eva’s childhood, her father’s remarriage, her friendship with Karen Armstrong, her stellar success in the advertising business, and meeting and marrying Adam, who becomes a successful artist. Shared tastes and mutual passion overcome their differing backgrounds. Eva is white, Adam is of mixed race and adopted; Adam’s father is a plumber, while Eva’s was senior partner in a top-tier accountancy firm. Marriage doesn’t dull their feelings: “Every day they told each other that they loved each other every day more.” After 10 years, they start thinking about children, but Eva’s infertility makes them decide to adopt. At a dinner party with Karen and her husband, Jean-Claude, several truths surface, including an important secret Eva has been keeping. But Adam doesn’t focus on the injury to him; rather, he sees the secret as something she “had borne heavily…from now on Adam wanted her to know that he was bearing it with her—with, not against her,” a sentence that beautifully encapsulates what love is. As in his previous novels, Cacoyannis (Bowl of Fruit (1907), 2015, etc.) uses his familiarity with London, its various subcultures, and the art world to good effect. The themes of adoption and stepparents, as well as the mixed-race characters, reflect the way people live now. At times, and despite Eva’s secrets, the couple can seem too good and too fortunate to be true; apart from a brief episode of Eva’s “melancholia,” they have amazing sex every day. Nevertheless, the author draws forth their layered humanity. The book’s seriousness is relieved, complicated, and strengthened by its trenchant observations of horrible people, along with black humor involving Eva’s dead relative, a rare 1970s biscuit tin, and the wooden sculpture of a bleeding vagina.
A thoughtful, observant, and often humorous tale about real connections.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5202-4685-7
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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