by Ray Hauser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2009
Designed to tug gently at the strings of certain nostalgic hearts, Christmas Lists would make an excellent stocking stuffer...
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A family-friendly romance bedecked with faith, traditional values and Tin Pan Alley-inspired songs.
As Hauser explains in the book’s introduction, Christmas Lists started life as a screenplay with music, a melodrama in the strictest sense, telling the story of single parents Johnny and Carlota, whose “meet cute” first encounter is a fender-bender at the Nashville elementary school attended by their precocious offspring. Though the original script was never produced, Hauser’s novella based on that earlier draft retains its scenic structure, intermittent musical interludes and cinematic passages in the form of interior monologues that speed the story along while allowing the characters to ruminate on their burgeoning romance. Johnny is a gifted musician looking for a break, playing in bands and caring for his daughter; Carlota is pursuing a grad degree in poetry at Belmont University while trying to reign in the extravagant behavior of her son. Though it’s certainly not love at first sight of the fireworks and keening violins variety for Johnny and Carlota, their affair progresses steadily via a series of playdates (ostensibly for the kids) involving picnics and checkers at Centennial Park. After a blended family Thanksgiving dinner at Carlota’s parent’s house, and more musical wooing, the couple decides to combine forces for a life of tuneful happily-ever-afterness. Old-fashioned sweetness and light are the order of the day, for the most part, despite some gestures toward modernity (single parenthood, race relations, etc). And while Hauser’s characters, regardless of age, mostly speak in a uniform voice, what they have to say is timeless and generally charming. Only Carlota’s annoying habit of speaking in forced verse (she’s a poet) breaks the largely untroubled surface.
Designed to tug gently at the strings of certain nostalgic hearts, Christmas Lists would make an excellent stocking stuffer for those who long for the days of Hallmark Hall of Fame TV specials, Rodgers & Hammerstein hits and other ghosts of seasons past.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4401-4238-3
Page Count: 76
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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