A coming-of-age tale (nominated for the prestigious Prix Goncourt) that's set before and during the German occupation of France in WW II. This time out, Labro (One Summer Out West, 1991, etc.) invests an idyllic setting with the tensions of the Resistance and manages to pull off that most difficult of things- -making a boy's father heroic not only in the eyes of the child but also in the eyes of the adult narrator and the reader. The narrator, youngest of seven children, first describes daily life before the war. A family album, or ``The Album,'' ``reinforces the tribal feeling that unites us,'' while the family house is known to all and sundry as ``The Villa.'' The father is a benevolent type, and, as the Nazis occupy the provinces, a succession of ``old friends'' and ``temporary gardeners'' come to stay—they are Jews, of course, and father is aiding and abetting them. The narrator moves from colorful accounts of local neighbors to more sober reflections on the relationship between his literary conception of the ``hero'' and its real-life equivalent, mostly in the person of his father. The children become part of the conspiracy and learn to ``play a role''; there are reprisals, collaborations, and deportations; German soldiers occupy ``The Villa''; and a succession of scary moments are vividly drawn. After the Allied landing and German retreat, Sam, a teacher, arrives and convinces the father that his children must be taken to Paris so that they can receive first-rate educations. Reluctantly, he moves his family, and, at the finish, there's a portrait of city life as the narrator loses his provinciality and, in an epilogue, meets someone his father (now dead) saved during the war. Labro invests a familiar story of heroism with affection and even a sheen of nostalgia: a well-crafted novel that reads like a memoir.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-18448-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
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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