Bird (Alamo House, 1986; The Boyfriend School, 1986) outdoes herself with this hilarious, deadpan account of a Texan artist's attempt at surrogate motherhood-a warm, wise, and witty comedy by an author who's finally his her stride. Spaced-out San Antonio artist Trudy Herring is no one's idea of a perfect mother. She drifts from one unemployment check to another while creating weird objets d`art from other people's trash (a plastic Christ figure covered with plastic ants, called the Antychrist, for example). Her only regret, in fact, is a promise she made ten years ago: Forced to have an abortion, she vowed to the baby's spirit (nicknamed Sweet Pea) that she'd get her life together someday and bring it back. Now, at 38, Trudy despairs of making good on her guarantee. Salvation appears in the person of Hillary Goettler, Trudy's new boss of the Museum of Folk Art, a woman who dresses spectacularly, lives in a historic San Antonio mansion, is married into one of the city's oldest families and is cursed with infertility. Trudy offers to become a surrogate mother for Hillary, and before she can think twice she's been inseminated, ensconced in the Goettler home, clothed in all-cotton maternity jumpsuits, and crammed full of foul- tasting health-food dinners. Not surprisingly, Trudy and Hillary soon loathe each other, and Trudy begins sneaking out of the mansion to gorge on Mexican good and daydream about Sinclair Coker, the long-gone artist/boyfriend who sired Sweet Pea. At last Trudy finds him again-an overweight ex-gigolo hiding out at a condemned hot-springs spa-and must decide whether to give the new Sweet Pea a life of shallow luxury or one surrounded by questionable art objects, unpredictability and love. A wonderful take, placing Bird squarely among the best of Texas writers.
Pub Date: May 21, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-41123-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
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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