A paperback romance tarted up with literary and aesthetic scenery that has no effect on its Harlequin prose (“Kate’s flesh...
A slow and rather tedious love story, and first US publication, from Emerson throws together two historians obsessed with the same woman and lets nature take its course.
Historians Patrick Browning and Anne Fitzgerald are both wounded types, more or less permanently disappointed in their lovers and friends, and they become themselves by looking back across two centuries to find a world that is more congenial. They first meet at the British Museum, where they argue over the Elgin Marbles (Patrick thinks they belong in Greece) and take a mild dislike to each other. Although they don’t know it until much later, they’re both working on a biography of Mary Nisbet, Lord Elgin’s wife, who was tried for adultery in a scandalous 1803 trial. As their separate manuscripts near completion, Patrick and Anne become aware of each other (through their publishers) as rivals—and Anne hears rumors that Patrick has secretly purchased a cache of Mary Nisbet’s private journals from a shady antiquarian. A gang of thugs soon begins to terrorize Patrick on the streets at night, repeatedly roughing him up and ordering him to “go back to America.” Garden-variety skinheads? Something more sinister? Then Patrick’s flat is broken into and robbed—of nothing but the diaries. He confronts Elizabeth, accusing her of theft—only to find himself swept into her bed. They both have (married) lovers of their own, but they’re unable to keep apart from each other—just as they find themselves locked in a cutthroat competition to publish the first exhaustive biography of Mary Nisbet. Why don’t they just collaborate, you ask? Well, what kind of story would that make?
A paperback romance tarted up with literary and aesthetic scenery that has no effect on its Harlequin prose (“Kate’s flesh had been hot and solid and sweet, tasting of flowers”) or cornball plot.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-349-11512-5
Page Count: 295
Publisher: Abacus/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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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