bookshelf

CHANGES AND CHANCES

Name: CHANGES AND CHANCES
Author: Stanley Middleton
ISBN: 1-56131-004-2

by Stanley Middleton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 1992

bookshelf

Middleton, author of some 30 novels, here offers a sturdy, penetrating study of a man who ``doesn't seem to consider consequences'' and of the women who surround him, notably his housekeeper/lover. Adrian Hillier, a ne'er-do-well who inherited a fortune and now patronizes the arts, especially a small theater, finds what pleasure he can in casual affairs. His housekeeper, Elsie Mead, also his lover, ``prepared herself every morning, unconsciously, for her employer's assault.'' Then Hillier hires teenager Peter Fowler—the son, it turns out, of Alice Fowler, Hillier's former lover, who's now married to a man fretting over a long-promised promotion by Top Fare, a grocery chain where Hillier has connections. On that framework, Middleton builds a stately comedy of manners. Hillier unsuccessfully puts the moves on Alice, who in turn becomes good friends with Mrs. Mead (``I regret nearly all my life''). And things begin to fall apart for Hillier: ``His'' theater decides to abandon classical drama for popular farce and musicals, whereupon Hillier resigns and takes sick; Elsie meets poet Stephen Youlgrave, who takes to Elsie, many years his junior, and proposes; Elsie, whose first husband was an older man and a suicide, accepts and—now promised though still Hillier's housekeeper—refuses Hillier's advances. Meanwhile, Alice works on Hillier until he helps her husband attain the promised promotion. By the wedding scene and its denouement, everyone ends up relatively happy, even Hillier: ``There are always women. That keeps me from despair.'' Vintage workaday Middleton, neither surprising nor spectacular, but carefully built and realized—a book that also manages, via poet Youlgrave, to speculate at length on the uses of art: ``...poetry has more than a straightforward commercial exchange in view.''

Pub Date: July 30, 1992

ISBN: 1-56131-004-2

Page Count: 215

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MOTHER’S BOY
by Stanley Middleton

- BOOK REVIEW
BRIEF GARLANDS
by Stanley Middleton

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.