Ruefully wise. It warms and cheers like the best kind of southern comfort.
In another beguiling tale of life in the New South, a man learns some hard truths when he’s fired and his life seems to be in free-fall.
In his 40s, with a perfect job, happily married to Clarice, his son Palmer in medical school, Will Baggett thinks he has everything. Which means he’s set for a terrible fall as hubris, always prickly about complacency, steps in to teach Will some painful lessons. Along the way, Inman (Dairy Queen Days, 1997, etc.) introduces a passel of colorful characters, among them the protean lawyer Morris deLesseps, who recently wore buckskins but is now in a professorial tweed-jacket phase; Peachy Delchamps, an aspiring country singer as well as basketball player, who invented the famous “Peachy Pump”; and Will’s father, charming Tyler, who made his living “fleecing suckers.” The popular weather forecaster for a Raleigh TV station, Will takes his job seriously—he speaks at schools and garden clubs, and he checks out the malls so as to be available for his fans. He’s that rare creature, a seemingly happy man—until his station is bought and he’s fired. On his way to get his severance package, he’s stopped for running a light and has to appear in court; Clarice locks him out and demands a divorce; and when he goes to court, wearing his son’s jacket by mistake, drugs are found in the pocket, and he’s sent to the slammer. Will, whose parents died in a plane crash when he was 13, realizes, when cousin Wingfoot brings him back to the decaying family home, that he has never allowed himself to mourn them. But Will is strong and resilient; virtually destitute, he starts up a lawn-care business, and, over the summer, not only learns more about himself and his wife and son but begins to find that “other life” that Wingfoot says everyone has.
Ruefully wise. It warms and cheers like the best kind of southern comfort.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-41502-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
