by Saleema Nawaz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016
An overload of material—and pages—obscures the sincere heart of this earnest story.
Two sisters—close when they were children but divided by pain and problems as they grew into adulthood—have struggled ceaselessly with the bonds that connect them.
There’s no shortage of issues in Canadian writer Nawaz’s (Mother Superior, 2008) first full-length work of fiction. Race, illegal immigration, anorexia, and single parenting are just some of the lesser tributaries swelling the main storytelling flow, devoted to the complicated relationship between sisters Beena and Sadhana Singh. Born of a Punjabi Sikh father and an Irish-born American mother, the girls live over the family business—a bagel shop—in Montreal. Their father’s sudden death is followed by an arson attack on the building that engenders anxiety issues in younger sister Sadhana. Then their mother dies as the result of a celebratory meal prepared by the girls. Now, under the not-so-tender care of an uncle, the teenagers begin to go off the rails: 14-year-old Sadhana develops a life-threatening eating disorder while Beena, at 16, gets pregnant. Packed full of both content and introspective narration, the novel is ponderous and often downbeat, shuttling back and forth between the girls’ pasts and Beena’s present as she copes with the aftermath of Sadhana’s death, announced on the first page, for which her son, Quinn, blames her. As Beena sets about the sad business of sorting through her sister’s possessions, additional plot points emerge involving Quinn, the father he’s never known, and the fight to protect an immigrant family Sadhana was helping. Nawaz brings serious commitment to her ambitiously large tale, but its sluggishness and cast of cool characters work against the reader’s involvement, while the prose, often awkwardly intense—“More and more, regret has simply become the shadow I would cast if I stood in the sun”—sometimes makes matters worse.
An overload of material—and pages—obscures the sincere heart of this earnest story.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77089-009-1
Page Count: 456
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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