Rape, murder, abuse, incest, self-mutilation, and temporary insanity combine to form an uninspiring first novel. Growing up in an unspecified region of rural America, Jael hates her Mammie, who allows the men who buy her moonshine to force themselves on the girl with only the warning ``Don't take no more than you pay for.'' Jael eventually knocks Mammie over the head with a mallet, and the murder is blamed on a disgruntled customer. She is adopted by the deacon, River Bill, and lives contentedly in his house in the middle of the river until the day she predictably becomes ``his wife instead of his daughter...it confused me like nothing before.'' She takes off with a handsome young man who stops at their shop while River Bill isn't around, only to find when she awakens that he's disappeared with all her belongings—a development that surprises her far more than it will the reader. Jael spears frogs for dinner, makes a home under a giant oak, and begins a strange ritual: cutting herself on the stomach, hips, and insides of her thighs. The tone here is so matter-of-fact, and Jael's voice is so colorless, that even this extreme experience seems dull, lifeless, and predictable. After her rescue, Jael fakes amnesia so she won't have to go back to her former life and begin the difficult process of resocializing; instead, she finds support and strength in imaginary companions like the woman she models out of wax and the Virgin Mary. Reynolds's lackluster prose never leaves any doubt that Jael will overcome this passing madness, leaving little reason to watch her working as a janitor in a church, falling in love with a young artist, and joining a sexual- abuse survivors' group. The subject of abuse and recovery deserves more skilled treatment than it gets here. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-13994-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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
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