Arango’s debut novel stitches together a patchwork of people and events to form a believable portrait of an emerging fiber artist.
After collecting several quilts to decorate her first home as a newlywed, community college literature instructor Jo Benjamin begins attending a weekly quilting class. Having never threaded a needle before she turned 30, Jo’s first lumpy quilted placemat frustrates her. It also attracts the attention of Grace, an older quilter with a delightfully sharp wit who says, “[T]he only way to make a perfect quilt is to become a perfect person and then just sew naturally.” Thanks to Grace, introspective Jo loosens her grip on her needle and, eventually, her fiercely held secrets. The pair, along with two other friends, creates a quilt to sell at a holiday fundraiser at the California Montessori school where Jo’s husband teaches and her son attends. After the first successful year, the group creates a new quilt annually for several years, each on a different theme that Jo chooses. Through quilting, Jo finds that she’s finally able to express her deep feelings for world events and those closer to home. Her inner journey mirrors the writing in the novel—some earlier chapters feel choppy and self-absorbed, while later ones bloom with additional dialogue and longer interplay between characters. As she explores her various roles of mother, teacher, volunteer, daughter, wife and artist, Jo discovers that it’s her friendship with Grace that will allow her to uncover and possibly change her true feelings about Christmas. While some characters, such as Jo’s husband and father, seem underdeveloped, the detached, analytical narrator seems so true to life that some readers may be tempted to seek out photographs of her vividly described quilts. Crafters and artists will identify with Jo’s mixed feelings of elation and shame about her work, her fascination with color and texture and her uncertain place between the art and hobbyist worlds. Minor flaws can’t derail this surprisingly touching, but not overly sentimental, holiday story.
Pub Date: May 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460928943
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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