Next book

VIRGIN OF THE RODEO

The author of The Mommy Club (1991), etc., ventures deep into farcical territory with a Pecos-Bill-style tale—about a Texas misfit who joins the rodeo to find her long-lost father. Sonja Getz would always be out of place in a town like Dorfburg, Texas—the spot where her mother, minuscule Tinka Getz, washed ashore and shortly afterwards gave birth. An adorable blond FrÑulein whose fascination with noble savages led to an unwise affair with a quarter-breed American serviceman in Germany, Tinka landed in Texas unwed and pregnant, but was embraced nevertheless by the sentimental German-Americans she found there. Big-boned, book-addicted Sonja, on the other hand, was left to grow up in utter solitude, comforting herself with fantasies of her absent father, whom she assumed from a publicity photo found in her mother's dresser to be a Navajo trick roper, stoically referring to herself as a woman of color, and operating a faltering pest-control business. When Tinka remarries and kicks 29-year-old Sonja out, the dour young woman marches off to the local rodeo, where she hires quarrelsome trick roper Prairie James to help her find her dad. The mismatched pair rumble across Texas and New Mexico in James's rusty van with his horse, Domino, riding in back, ducking into various rodeos along the way to chat it up with such satisfying potential fathers as wizened old Cootie Ramos and Prairie's former roping mentor, El Marinero. In the end, Sonja learns the horrible truth behind her parentage—but since by that time she's discovered her own amazing talent for rodeo announcing, fallen in love with a refreshment-booth proprietor, and helped rescue Prairie James from his muddled past, the bad news has little effect. Bird's extra-broad, cartoon-like humor here may disappoint ``Mommy Club'' fans—but it's probably safe to say that no one's ever invented a rodeo gal like this before.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-385-41124-3

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993

Categories:
Next book

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

Categories:
Next book

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

Categories:
Close Quickview