An entertaining ride with a troubled but sympathetic young woman.
Debut author Asthana offers a novel about a young woman’s peculiar journey of self-discovery.
Los Angeles resident Genevieve is a lover of golden-age cinema and its stars, especially Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Humphrey Bogart. Her job only fuels her affection, as she works at the Hollywood Clothing Store, which specializes in selling clothing that’s been worn in the movies. It carries many curiosities and replicas, including Marilyn Monroe’s dress from Niagara (1953) and Jack Nicholson’s hat from Chinatown (1974). Genevieve has her share of personal problems, however. She’s unlucky in love—even sending herself flowers on Valentine’s Day—and carries the burden of a family tragedy. As she admires her store’s clothes, she often wonders if there’s something special in the fabric itself: “Could there be a transfer, due perhaps to some extraordinary quantum-electro-something…influence of the essence, the spirit, the chakra, the chi, of the former owner?” She decides to borrow different outfits for her own personal adventures and finds that her actions are, in fact, affected by the clothing she wears. She takes on different personas and helps others to do so, as well. Along the way, she investigates the bloody history of one of the store’s dresses, deals with her own troubled family, confronts a figure from her past, and searches for love. A summary of the plot may make its main idea seem a bit trite. However, Asthana executes the concept in subtle and unexpected ways. For example, when Genevieve attempts to help her friend Todd sort out his sexuality, she helps him into a leather jacket once worn by James Dean: “she had sought the clothing of a known bisexual….This way, she figured, Todd could decide what he really was, without being biased.” (Genevieve also gives Todd a dose of peyote to help him find himself.) Overall, the author manages to deftly mix aspects of suspenseful film noir, chick lit, and Hollywood nostalgia in this well-paced, concise tale.
An entertaining ride with a troubled but sympathetic young woman.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692367445
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Doublewood Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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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