An angry young girl struggles to grow up in `60s suburbia—in this flawed but still intriguing tragicomic debut, first published in England, by a New York writer. Maggie Pittsfield, 12, is by all accounts a lucky young girl. Daughter of amiable candymaker Robert ``Sweet is My Middle Name'' Pittsfield, Maggie lives with her family in beautiful Port Huron, Michigan, where the shore of the great lake lies in her own backyard, she has her own room and her own dog, and her beautiful, self-abnegating mother is at her beck and call. Nevertheless, Maggie is a difficult child—as her exceedingly critical grandmother is fond of pointing out—who, when she's not threatening to desert her neurotic younger sister, is playing serious games of doctor with a girlfriend in the nearby woods. While her parents argue ineffectually over whether something is terribly wrong with the girl, Maggie struggles through a deadly boring session of summer school imposed as punishment for her scandalous conduct the previous semester. What the scandal involved is the central mystery in this tale of secrets denied and horror suppressed. Maggie herself is too busy trying to control the separate personalities that she imagines are fighting for dominance within her (Katrina, the adopted child; Trixie, the mischievous girl; Sarah, the good daughter; Peggy, the terrified infant, and so on) and evading her school counselor's probing questions to take the lid off the searing truth that all this activity is meant to hide. That Maggie's secret has to do with half-forgotten sexual abuse comes as no surprise—beneath its hard-edged frenzy, this story reads like a textbook case. Nevertheless, the author's uncompromising, forceful style keeps the pages turning.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40945-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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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