This debut novel has its moments, but reliance on clichÇ characters keeps MacInnes (the 1987 Nelson Algren Award winner) from fully exploiting a unique setting and some intriguing ideas. In 1946 LeeAnn, a nine-year-old Army brat nicknamed Lucky, is living on Kwajalein Island in the Marshalls with her family when her father, Jack, becomes set on their witnessing the atomic tests on nearby Bikini. Her mother, Matty, is less keen on the idea, but dad insists that they be present at what he believes to be the central event of his time. Narrator LeeAnn and her ten-year-old brother, Bubba, do see the blast (Bubba photographs it, intent on selling his work to Life magazine); afterwards, Jack begins diving for contaminated items from a ship that could not be freed of radiation. Jack and his relationship with Matty are boilerplate material: He's an alcoholic military man too stubborn to ask anyone for help, and she's the angry wife who married him because ``at that time any man in a uniform was A-OK and service life meant travel.'' The real gems here are the bits of information about atomic testing and the American government's treatment of the island natives and its attitude towards nuclear testing in general. MacInnes, who lived on Kwajalein from 1956 to '57, returned more recently to research this book, and her work is evident. Natives who returned to the island in 1957 forever after referred to that time as ``the year of the animal'' because the children born then didn't appear human, and islanders who had been downwind from the blast were made to bathe in a lagoon each morning in order to ``wash off'' the radiation. Teenage LeeAnn has an unconvincing romance with a man 14 years her senior, who leaves a lasting impression, and she then goes on to outlive her entire family, although once she leaves the island the novel loses much of its flair. Fine local color and dark secrets that are ultimately too fragmented.
Pub Date: Feb. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-08001-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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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