Variously shadowy, exasperating and snappish characters populate a delicate, muted, not quite complete tale.
The uneasy relationship between two differently self-absorbed women leads to betrayal and tragedy.
Opening in 1995 at the memorial service for suicide David Bronstein, Cline’s second novel (What to Keep, 2004) loops backward to reveal what preceded this moment—for David, his ex-girlfriend, Annabeth Jensen, and her ex-friend/employer, film director Laura Katz. Annabeth, a young film editor and the product of a dysfunctional Minnesotan family (her drunken father disappeared and her mother never accepted it), is perpetually anxious. Her live-in relationship with David seemed initially fulfilling but has become disappointing, which is something of a pattern in her life; it was the same with her feelings about Los Angeles, even with a trip to the Oscars. When Annabeth bumps into charismatic Laura at a party, she feels excited—they share an obsession with film which makes their soon burgeoning friendship seem like dating. But Laura is inconsistent, first soliciting Annabeth’s opinion on the script she’s planning to shoot—Trouble Doll, about Bunny, a Midwestern girl in L.A.—then not following up. Laura does hire Annabeth as her editor when the shoot begins, but the relationship starts to fray, and Laura fires Annabeth before the film is complete. From the depths of her depression, Annabeth fails to notice David’s increasing fragility and on seeing the finished Trouble Doll she realizes Laura has stolen scenes from her own childhood and attributed them to loser Bunny, who “doesn’t make any real decisions about her life until it’s too late.” Annabeth’s subsequent withdrawal from David brings the story—and the parallel narrative—full circle.
Variously shadowy, exasperating and snappish characters populate a delicate, muted, not quite complete tale.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6227-0
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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