This rich, sprawling, ambitious, likably ungainly story—a sequel to Smith's Victorian-period mystery, The Vanished Child (1992), and the middle volume in a projected trilogy—may frustrate connoisseurs of the well-made novel but will amply reward readers seeking a ripping yarn with provocative and substantial things to say. Talented pianist Perdita Halley and Baron Alexander von Reisden now find themselves in Paris in 1910, the year when the Seine overflows, flooding the city and climaxing a bafflingly intricate plot that includes the unsolved murder of a street prostitute nicknamed ``Mona Lisa,'' a scheme to steal from the Louvre the famous painting that is her namesake, and the investigation of charges that the highly marketable works of the late Impressionist painter Claude Mallais may in fact be forgeries, and that Mallais's widow may be something other than the docile helpmate she appears. Smith adroitly grafts onto these intertwining plots the conflict that engrosses the embattled Perdita: whether to pursue the musical career she was surely born for, or to submit instead to her needful lover's embarrassed ultimatum (``I want to be more important than the piano''). The author convincingly evokes the period through hundreds of exquisitely selected details, and makes the vivid secondary characters—including unmistakable simulacra of Colette, Gertrude Stein, and Picasso—altogether credible both as distinctive individuals and as participants in the complex melodrama that surrounds, and unexpectedly transforms, her resourceful heroine. Though it's crammed to bursting with resonant particulars and stylish, often epigrammatic writing, the novel moves rather too slowly—and the convolutions of its narrative are a little too easily foreseen (for example, few will fail to guess the outcome of the Claude Mallais subplot). For all that, the thick ambience, the forthright feminist subtext, and especially Smith's gritty and appealing heroine make for intellectual stimulation of the highest order—and should make most readers impatiently eager for the completion of the trilogy.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-345-39135-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
