A real potboiler but a good one: interesting characters, exciting situations, a nice, taut narrative.
A sweeping historical from Britisher Read (The Templars, 2000, etc.), who brings us into WWI and the Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of a liberated young lady of the early 20th century.
Alice Fry may seem as English as Devonshire cream, but she is actually half-French, and her father, the founder and president of the Progressive Press, is a couple of degrees short of being an outright Communist. Alice is both open-minded and uncommonly well-informed about the world—thanks, in part, to all the books on her father’s backlist—so it shouldn’t be too surprising that her first great love affair is with someone most of her friends consider entirely inappropriate: an aristocrat. Edward Cobb is the son of a baronet, a product of Eton and Oxford, an army officer, and a budding member of Parliament. Seduced by the precocious Alice, he’s smitten overnight and begs her to marry him. Although Alice disapproves of marriage as an institution, she accepts. But soon afterward Alice’s father becomes the center of controversy when one of his books (a treatise on sex) brings a trial for public obscenity. Worried for his political career, Edward decides that Alice is too much of a liability and breaks off the engagement. Pregnant with his child, Alice leaves the country for a position as governess in the household of a Russian count. There, the turmoil of WWI and the approaching Russian Revolution surround her—turmoil that she (as daughter of a socialist intellectual) is in a better position to understand than most. Meanwhile, Edward regrets his decision and sets off to search for her in a Europe convulsed by revolution and war. Alice, however (now the mother of Edward’s son), has fallen in love with the baron who hired her.
A real potboiler but a good one: interesting characters, exciting situations, a nice, taut narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-30398-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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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