WITHOUT HER

Name: WITHOUT HER
Author: Rosalind Brackenbury
ISBN: 978-1-88328579-1

by Rosalind Brackenbury ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2019

The author’s delicate touch captures the head if not the heart of this meditation on loyalty, friendship, and the geometry...

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A lifelong friendship turns more complicated and murky when the disappearance of one of the women leads to unwelcome discoveries and a reconfiguration.

Passions supposedly run high in Brackenbury’s (The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier, 2018, etc.) latest novel—there's the sexual intensity of a long love affair; the decision to risk everything for a career in filmmaking; jealousy and competitiveness between women friends. And yet little of this fire ignites the pages of what is a steady, cool, thoughtful novel charting the relationship between Hannah Farrell and Claudia Prescott across the decades. The pair bonded at an English boarding school and remained BFFs through the college years at Cambridge and beyond. A trip to Europe during which they met Alexandre, an attractive student, did set up some tension between the women, but Hannah, the more mysterious of the two, solved the dilemma by walking away, leaving Alexandre to Claudia. Despite other occasional disappearances later in life, Hannah opted for a traditional track as wife to Philip and mother to twins. Claudia, however, struck out for California to try her hand as a moviemaker before eventually settling as a teacher of film studies at a college in Virginia, with Alexandre as her distant, occasional, yet lifelong lover. The two women stayed in touch and visited annually, but now Hannah has failed to show up as expected at the family holiday home, and Claudia is summoned by Philip. When Hannah does reappear, the not entirely unpredictable pieces of the story fall neatly into place. A final episode imports its own inherent intensity, yet it is in the small gestures that the story achieves some resonance.

The author’s delicate touch captures the head if not the heart of this meditation on loyalty, friendship, and the geometry of human interconnection.

Pub Date: July 23, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-88328579-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Delphinium

Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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.