Shrewdly commercial and seamed with some memorable descriptions of the polar wilds, Lupton’s latest, though unsteady at...
Can an intrepid mother and her plucky deaf daughter survive a perilous ride across a midnight polar landscape to find the missing-presumed-dead third member of their family?
Threats accumulate more thickly than snowflakes in the arctic blizzard through which guilty yet resourceful mother Yasmin Alfredson must drive, in this third novel from British suspense author Lupton (Afterwards, 2012, etc.). The strongly visual story hits the ground running as Yasmin and her 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, having just arrived on a flight from England to Fairbanks, Alaska, are told that a fire has killed everyone at Anaktue, the tiny village where Yasmin’s husband/Ruby’s father, Matt, was based while researching a wildlife documentary. Although the police have found Matt’s wedding ring at the site, Yasmin refuses to accept his death and, since the authorities have stopped looking, resolves to find him herself. What follows is a woman-and-daughter-in-peril scenario verging at times on the superhuman as Yasmin ends up driving a vast truck across Alaska, through terrifying terrain and weather conditions, pursued—not unlike in the 1971 Steven Spielberg movie Duel—by faceless foes. While this journey is paced like a bullet, Lupton layers on multiple additional dangers: creepy eco-warriors; avalanches; scary anonymous emails of pictures of dead animals; scruple-free energy companies; wolves; and more. The narrative point of view is split between Yasmin, repenting of her shortcomings toward both Matt and Ruby, and the spunky child, assisted by her Voice Magic laptop. However, a late shift in focus saps some of the story’s powerful intimacy, substituting skimpier narration and worthier themes. Lupton is at her best when describing the dark, wintry wilderness and pitting her two female protagonists against all comers.
Shrewdly commercial and seamed with some memorable descriptions of the polar wilds, Lupton’s latest, though unsteady at times, delivers an engrossing wallop of readable escapism.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90367-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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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