From the prolific Canadian author of the novels Gates of the Sun and Luna (not reviewed), among other works, an earnest, sometimes tedious account of a young woman's exploration of family history. Mousy Chloe, a special ed teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, is married to Doug, a condescending grad student who's won a grant to do research in Scotland. Before going off to join him, Chloe goes on a cross-country drive and finally admits to herself what everyone else has known all along—that Doug is embroiled in an affair with a flashy fellow student who just happens to be in London that summer. When her mother is scheduled to have a breast lump biopsied, Chloe seizes the excuse to postpone her departure for Scotland. Then she agrees to accompany her father, whom she dislikes for unspecified reasons, to a cousin's wedding up in the French-speaking countryside where he's lived since splitting from her mother. Chloe has given surprisingly little thought to her mixed heritage (her father is French Catholic, her mother English Protestant). Meanwhile, she sends a letter off to Doug, asking about the presumed mistress. She also goes on a date with a flirty local poet, hangs out with various French salt-of-the-earth cousins, and even bonds a bit with her father. Armed with a French- English dictionary, Chloe peruses her grandmother's diaries and begins to understand the taboos that were broken when her parents married. Finally, the awaited letter comes from Doug, confirming Chloe's suspicions, and a serious accident cuts short the father- daughter reconciliation. We're given to believe, however, that Chloe's sunny idyll has grounded her enough so that real self- discovery may begin at last. She starts out so clueless that there's some pleasure in watching her baby-steps toward maturity, but other characters are frustratingly opaque: Various crises are merely hinted at, Chloe harbors much resentment, but her rogue relatives seem guilty of little more than occasional bad temper. Meandering, then, and only mildly engaging.
Pub Date: March 27, 1997
ISBN: 0-00-648113-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
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
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