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HENRIETTA SNOW

Perhaps best suited for already established fans, but there's also enough poignancy and universality to make an impression...

The latest chronicle of the ongoing adventures of high-school friends now in their 50s, last heard from in Snowy (2002).

Title heroine Snowy is trying to make a fresh start after dealing with bankruptcy and her husband's recent suicide. Weakened by writer's block and a bout of agoraphobia, she is hardly the social butterfly she once was as a popular cheerleader in high school. Often consumed by memories of those days, she spends much of her time reminiscing with old friends and even rekindling a relationship with Tom, a former Gunthwaite High sweetheart. MacDougall does a fine job showing her aging characters trying (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to live up to their former youthful fabulousness, under the strain of arthritis and extra weight, the temptation of eternal youth through plastic surgery, thinking you know someone and having them surprise you. With time and a little help from her friends, Snowy eventually emerges and slowly rediscovers the joys of traveling and hiking through the mountains of New Hampshire, with lots of chat and good grub along the way. A traumatic incident involving a man with some dynamite shocks her from her writer's block, and for a while it almost seems like all is well–including the fitting high-school reunion finale, during which the friends gather and bask in their old glory. While the story stands well enough on its own, the constant dredging of teenage memories becomes tiresome, as does Snowy's daughter Ruhamah falling in and out of love with mostly the sons of Snowy's friends. MacDougall often resorts to long streams of exposition in order to fill the reader in on events past, but she atones with lively dialogue and adorable protagonists.

Perhaps best suited for already established fans, but there's also enough poignancy and universality to make an impression on those meeting these characters for the first time.

Pub Date: April 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-9663352-4-4

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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