Ripe for filming, this novel is both poignant and authentic.
Love doesn’t always follow the rules. Should creating a child be any different?
Rayner (One Moment, One Morning, 2011, etc.) gently disentangles the lives of men and women (including the main characters from her previous novel) brought together by the desire to have a baby. All of these lives converge through the alternative parenting movement. Recovering from ovarian cancer, Cath realizes that she truly wants a child with her devoted husband. For his part, Rich had always dreamed of a family with Cath, a dream that had seemed to fade from view during her illness. But without ovaries, and rejecting adoption, they will need another generous woman to donate eggs. Once that hurdle is past, they’ll need to deal with Cath’s judgmental mother and sister-in-law, who wields alternative medical advice like a weapon. Lou, recovering from her own brush with a cancer scare, faces a different obstacle. Her partner, Sofia, has no interest in settling down. Furthermore, her mother—who seems stuck in the 1950s, devoutly ignoring her daughter’s lesbianism—and sister have never considered Lou mother material. Finding the courage to face family bullying proves more difficult than getting pregnant. Once connected through the network of alternative parenting sites, both Cath and Lou do become pregnant—Cath, through the generosity of Lou, who shares her eggs, and Lou, through the lucky arrival of Adam on the scene. A gay doctor who wishes to be a real dad, not just a sperm donor, Adam meets Lou through a mutual friend, and the two negotiate a truly alternative and kind plan for parenting their child. Despite filling her story with so much heartbreak and conflict, Rayner deftly avoids sounding clichéd. Her characters ring true, their concerns are realistic and their emotions guileless.
Ripe for filming, this novel is both poignant and authentic.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-02148-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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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