Brett, whose wry chatter has enlivened mysteries starring Charles Paris, Mrs. P and Fethering (The Witness at the Wedding,...
A wry study of a man, 60, single again, and willing—nay, eager—to bonk anyone who’ll have him.
When his wife Andrea reaches menopause, Bill Stratton assumes that her condition accounts for her lack of interest in sex and resigns himself to privation. Ah, well, he reflects, the marriage is sturdy enough to survive abstinence. Bill soldiers on to middling fame as the newscaster who coins the phrase “By way of contrast” (a device that leads to an amusing on-air anecdote), then spawns a series of BWOC books; Andrea continues with her National Health Service chums, saving the planet from shallow types like Bill. One day, after 40 years of marriage, she tells him she’s known he was all wrong for her since the second week of their honeymoon and is leaving him for Dr. Dewi. Bill ponders this farewell as deeply as his shallowness will allow and soon begins noticing breasts everywhere, especially on his agent Sal, his overly ripe BWOC manager Carolyn and Andrea’s friend Ginnie, an actress with a wicked sense of humor. Then he goes a lot further than noticing them on scores of women he wines and dines and beds. An energetic cuddle, a quick getaway and flowers in the morning are his signatures until mild heartburn drives him to the pub for bouts of misogynist depression with Trevor. When Andrea succumbs to lung cancer, Bill, true to form, does not have an epiphany but does, to his surprise, fall in love, sort of, this time with the right woman for him.
Brett, whose wry chatter has enlivened mysteries starring Charles Paris, Mrs. P and Fethering (The Witness at the Wedding, 2005, etc.), has great fun playing around with sex past 60. Whatever your age, you’ll have fun with this one too.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59264-162-8
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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