Psychologist and first-time author Mitchell offers a highly entertaining and unusually illuminating study of female bonding The focus here is on the time-tested but undeniably complex friendships among four African-American women who first met in college. The long-suffering Gayle has wanted for years to return to school for an advanced degree, but instead she toils away at an unfulfilling desk job in order to remain at home in Cleveland and care for her ailing mother, alcoholic father, and withdrawn brother. The glamorous Monique is flawless on the outside, a mess within; a successful attorney, she hides her emotional, warmhearted side from the world with a tough-girl, ultraconfident veneer. Cynthia is insecure and lonely and will do almost anything to meet Mr. Right; unfortunately, several Mr. Wrongs will cause her to make some decisions that have drastic consequences. And, finally, there's Roxanne, highly educated, attractive, and good-natured to a fault, but she can barely make ends meet with her job as an inner-city teacher and the hours she devotes to volunteer work. In Minnesota, where the girls met at a small liberal arts school populated almost exclusively by white kids, friendship seemed easy but romance was hard to come by. Now that they've been out in the world for almost eight years, however, both friendship and men are trouble. It'll take a reunion at Cynthia's condo in Tampa, and an unexpected crisis, to get these four very different but equally loving and worthy women to realize that for all these years they've been looking in all the wrong places. Nothing groundbreaking here, just another ``girltalk'' novel, but this one has heart and, even rarer, soul.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-94306-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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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