The pervasive emphasis on kindness and responsibility is what gives this book its value.
This sharply realistic debut novel traces the lives of Jack and Connor Reed, brothers growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
The two are orphaned when Jack is a fledgling lawyer of 25 and Connor a shy, likable boy of 15. This narrative sticks relentlessly to the issues of private life—Jack’s relationships with women, Connor’s near-fatal leukemia, both men’s marriages and children—and follows their careers only insofar as they contribute to stress, vanity or economic stability. Although everyone involved is depicted as being exceptionally bright, no one seems to have a stray thought to spare for art, science, religion, philosophy or the public good. An unwavering focus on daily life, of the dog-to-the-vet, trip-to-the-convenience-store variety, makes the characters’ lives seem real, but also pedestrian. The story’s merit is neither on the level of events, which are relatively unexciting, nor of language. Goldhagen's style is merely a means to an end, clear, serviceable and occasionally cliché-ridden, as when she describes Jack’s second wife as having “dewy skin and eyes blue and faceted as cut sapphires.” When she strays from familiar locutions, however, the results are hardly more successful, as when one character reflects, “There were annoying hangnails of boredom itching to be chewed.” Where the author excels is at the level of moral choice: Her characters struggle toward a sense of what it means to be an adult, one who takes responsibility for another's well-being. When Connor is diagnosed with leukemia, for example, his relationship with his wife Laine becomes mired in conflict. Nevertheless, when Connor insists on taking a shower despite his doctor’s warning that the heat could cause him to faint, Laine sits protectively “watching him through the beveled glass.”
The pervasive emphasis on kindness and responsibility is what gives this book its value.Pub Date: April 18, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51597-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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