What could be a charming tale of redemption becomes a heavy-handed fable.
Abandoned by her mother when she was just 5, Ellen bounced from foster families to group homes, learning to hide from the world. Shy, reclusive and obese, she's socially invisible to most people.
Initially, Ellen’s tale is intriguing. She's gone to extreme lengths to keep the world from noticing her: working the night shift on the Costco cleaning crew, having her groceries delivered and combing her hair closely over the left side of her face to hide a scar that people might stare at. The closest she comes to social interaction is spying on two of her neighbors, whom she considers pets and has created nicknames for: "Heidi," a woman with braids, and "T-Bone," a small-time drug dealer. Usually she just takes notes on their behavior, but lately other people seem to be messing with her pets and Ellen doesn’t like that. Heidi is faced with an unexpected pregnancy, and T-Bone encounters some difficult customers. Then, when a blind woman sits next to her on the bus, Ellen is intrigued and follows her onto the street, which is fortuitous, because she saves the woman from muggers. The blind woman, named Temerity, and her twin brother, Justice, embrace Ellen as a new friend, delivering her from loneliness. Temerity is, of course, cheeky and brave. As a student of anthropology, Justice is, of course, nonjudgmental, seeing the unique beauty in everyone. Soon, Temerity and Ellen have embarked on a series of interventions, including rescuing a co-worker from sexual harassment, rescuing Heidi from a life-altering mistake and rescuing T-Bone from a near-death encounter. With its relentless reminders of Temerity’s blindness and Ellen’s awkwardness, Shattuck’s (Legacy, 2013) latest unfortunately buckles under the weight of its own premise.
What could be a charming tale of redemption becomes a heavy-handed fable.Pub Date: May 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16761-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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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