Hancock herself, an actress who's written memoirs (Just Me, 2008, etc.)—proves that old age is not a time to languish,...
Marguerite Carter never found life easy. She lost her parents as a child and worked for the French Resistance during World War II before coming to England with a desire to make the world a better place.
She left behind her French lover after the war rather than live a quiet life in rural France. Marguerite pours her energy into teaching, immersing herself in her students’ lives, while supporting political causes and attending marches and protests. She falls in love with fellow teacher Tony, but their relationship, to her disappointment, is destined to remain platonic. Eventually, she feels her age and growing irrelevance. Retirement and Tony’s death leave her feeling empty, until she travels back to France to reunite with her past. Hancock sometimes props Marguerite on a soapbox and uses her to speak out against 20th-century injustices—racial and economic issues, the arms race, the AIDS epidemic—but Miss Carter’s backbone is strong enough for the events of postwar England to be placed on her shoulders for an attempted fix. Hancock has managed to create a likable character in Marguerite, balancing her messiah complex with enough flaws to be fully human. Though the story covers a half-century of change, Marguerite remains the same. She retains her ideals and the determination she and Tony shared “to not do nothing.” She’s not happy even in old age without a cause to fight. Perhaps because of this, she’s never seemed truly happy. “We are who we are,” Hancock seems to say.
Hancock herself, an actress who's written memoirs (Just Me, 2008, etc.)—proves that old age is not a time to languish, having published her first novel at age 81.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4088-2917-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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