ALL I NEED TO GET BY

Name: ALL I NEED TO GET BY
Author: Sophfronia Scott
ISBN: 0-312-31856-1

by Sophfronia Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2004

Somber, controlled prose lends dignity to this family drama, though the emotions seem oddly muted. Still, a polished and...

bookshelf

Black family, deep roots, abiding love.

Crita Carter lives in New York but she isn’t from there. Her father’s roots are in rural Mississippi, her mother’s in blue-collar Cleveland, where Crita grew up, the daughter of a 1950s siren in a poodle skirt whose sexy pout charmed Henry Carter into marriage. An early morning call from her mother brings bad news: Henry, the father who stands impossibly tall and strong in her childhood memories, is very sick, and no one knows why. Crita heads for Alexandria, Virginia, to pick up her married sister, and as the crowded urban settings give way to the flat openness of Ohio, they begin to retell the stories that shaped their lives, going all the way back to their beautiful, pipe-smoking grandmother. Vinola Ellis Carter, who eked out a living on a dirt farm, was beloved by her children but nearly killed in a fit of jealous rage by her husband. Yet she endured, and the next generation prospered. Henry Carter inherited enough of his father’s temper that Crita and her sisters grew up knowing better than to cross him, but son Linc turned from a promising athlete into a junkie beyond hope or help. Caught between desire for an old love, Tree, and feelings for her dying father, Crita is at sixes and sevens. She attempts a reconciliation with Linc, out of control and near death from multiple addictions. Because of him, Crita is critically wounded in a street-corner shooting and hovers in a morphine dream between this world and the next, seeing visions of her father and her family. Linc recovers, and Crita survives, but Henry Carter does not.

Somber, controlled prose lends dignity to this family drama, though the emotions seem oddly muted. Still, a polished and promising debut.

Pub Date: March 16, 2004

ISBN: 0-312-31856-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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.