A Gothic tale of incest takes a gnarled and long-winded turn to unsettle a rural French community in this Femina Prizewinning novel, the first of Fleutiaux's to be published in America. Five-year-old Estella loves her infant brother, Dan, in an unsisterly way from the moment she sees him. Through the years, that love mounts to an unnatural obsession erotically reciprocated by Dan. As children, the two do everything together—discover new lands on the family grounds, romp with irritating, omnipresent playmate Adrien, and wonder at the bizarre adults in their lives. There's the mother, a wispy has-been dancer; the father, a lawyer and voice of reason; and the nursemaid, Tiresia, eerie and veiled, who, like her Theban namesake, is nearly blind but can see the truth. As adults, the sibs part hostilely: Estella forsakes music for a husband and law studies, while Dan, angry at her abandonment, flees to New York to pursue dance and homosexuality. Estella's wrenching visit to his SoHo loft ends when Adrien calls them home for their parents' funeral. The funeral opens scabs: Adrien blames the siblings, they blame him, they blame themselves, and they ponder their abnormal family. But after a nearly interminable bout of tortured brooding, Estella and Dan get over it, become lovers, and move to Paris. The belabored Gothicisms—dark and stormy settings, superlatives of emotion, psycho-phenomena—are suffocating, and readers will be ready for the denouement long before it comes. The upshot is this: Tiresia waits until she's on her deathbed to reveal why the neighborhood's adults stifled the scandalous truth about the children's heritages. Incest, murder, abandonment, and intrigue should make a hot read—but this book, apparently taking its title to heart, seems to go on forever.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-28617-6
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
