A first novel explores the lives and loves of middle-class African-Americans, but pales in comparison to Terry McMillan's (no relation) widely acclaimed Waiting to Exhale. At center stage here are two intelligent, attractive women, Ginger Montgomery and her cousin, Kim Lee. On the surface Ginger appears to have it all: comfortable income, stunning home, four beautiful children, and terrific sex with Jackson, her second husband and the father of her youngest child. But Jackson refuses to let her pursue her longtime career dream of becoming a real estate agent, insists that she work at a tedious factory job beneath her intellect and skill levels, and denies that their inability to relate outside the bedroom is affecting the lives of their entire family. To make matters worse, Ginger's mother, Katherine, is drinking too much and sleeping with a man 20 years her junior; Jackson's cousin-in-law, Mae Thelma, has her eye on Jackson; and two of the kids are having trouble in school. Meantime, cousin Kim has problems of a different kind: Bill, the man she loves, won't ask her to marry him; her father has recently suffered a severe stroke; and her mother (Ginger's aunt) dies of complications from the stress. Eventually Kim buckles under her burdens and winds up in the hospital instead of at the altar, and it takes heart-wrenching confessions on her part and Bill's to bring the two to an understanding. Together and alone, then, Ginger and Kim struggle to come to terms with their sexuality, their independence, their ``men,'' and each other; regrettably, the heavy-handed sex scenes and overdoses of references to pop culture drag down what at times is an engaging, vividly rendered story. Despite its undeniable momentum, a rough-around-the-edges debut. If Waiting to Exhale is a masterpiece, this McMillan is a mass-market reproduction. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51866-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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
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