From second-novelist Mickle (The Queen of October, 1989): an engaging, sweet-natured account of a Florida family's survival in the wake of a father's desertion. The Marsh family lives in Palm Key, Florida, a small town where father George is a grade-school principal who leaves wife Linda and their three children—Drew, Mandy, George, Jr.—for Mandy's fifth-grade teacher. The consequences of the divorce are told in alternate chapters by deserted Linda and 15-year-old Drew. The emotional accuracy of many scenes rings true, and the fairy- tale nature of the upbeat narrative is forestalled long enough to be credible. Linda goes to work as a clerk in the payroll office at the town dump, and Drew fortunately has an accident with a Mercedes owned by the new doctor in town, Mark Haley. Haley, of course, decides to hire Drew's mother in his office, and the eventual romance that develops is perhaps too predictable. Meanwhile, there's the usual panoply of predicaments: the roof gives way, and Rex the Roofer makes a pass at Linda and sneaks into her bedroom; after obscene phone calls, Linda gets on unlisted number; the dog dies, and a new one must be found and named, etc. At ``Fort Marsh,'' life is never easy, but neither is it usually more taxing than the trials and tribulations of a TV sitcom life. Finally, Drew uses a fishing rodeo as the medium of rapprochement between his mother and the doctor when things seem a little rocky. Mickle doesn't entirely avoid sentimentality here—but she does zero in on the complexities of day-to-day survival and seasonal change to chronicle the way a family resuscitates itself.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-56512-017-5
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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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