Desperately uneven, but this first-time author may well be, even so, a voice worth hearing again.
Like the heroine of her first novel, Setton was born in Morocco but raised in the States. Her command of the setting, though, suggests that Morocco has stayed with her deep-down inside.
After her mother’s death, 18-year-old Brit decides to return to the family home in Morocco. She has come there to play out two obsessions, one with a 19th-century Jewish martyr, Suleika, who was executed in Fez for refusing to renounce her faith, the other with her handsome, worldly uncle, Gaby. At the outset, Brit is already plotting with servants and some of the family to cast a spell on this 30-year-old womanizer. All she needs to do is steal some of his underwear. Regrettably, neither Brit, who narrates the first half here alone, nor Setton seems to see the humor in this predicament; but this comes as no great shock in a book that takes itself so seriously that it reaches the point of self-parody. Interposed with Brit’s family dilemma are different versions of Suleika’s story, in which she’s depicted as everything from a martyr to a slut. Then, in a stunning and surprisingly effective coup de theatre, Setton shifts narrative voices to Gaby’s point-of-view, and for the remaining pages, with varying effectiveness, the narrative alternates between the two protagonists. Although it wants desperately to be a serious rumination on deracination and the secrets of identity, the novel remains burdened with its sexual preoccupations. As its central characters edge closer to an inevitable liaison, the writing, already ornately descriptive, becomes unbearably overheated, sometimes downright ludicrous. Yet Setton is not untalented. She has a sophisticated eye and nose for the intoxicating, almost suffocating atmosphere of Morocco, and, from a purely technical standpoint, her play with viewpoint is skilled.
Desperately uneven, but this first-time author may well be, even so, a voice worth hearing again.Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58243-082-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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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