by Susan Gregg Gilmore ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
Nothing new here.
Gilmore’s debut novel about a young girl coming of age in a small Southern town.
Ringgold, Ga., is a town as small and Southern as they come. Growing up in the 1970s, the preacher’s daughter, Catherine Grace Cline, dreams of becoming a big-city success as she licks countless Dilly Bars atop the picnic table at the Dairy Queen. The local, Southern-as-pecan-pie dialogue and apparently mandatory use of two first names for every man, woman and child, sound about as flaky as church-going matriarch Ida Belle Fletcher’s baptism-day brownies. However, the town comes to life through vivid, albeit unoriginal, characters. The spoiled classmate with a perfectly placed barrette, the town gossip, the beautiful Sunday school teacher and the bookish sister, while entertaining, are too prosaic to be engaging. Though the Church plays a motivating role—Catherine’s deeply religious and charismatic father raises her and her sister on biblical parables—the story never delves into a profound discussion of faith. Catherine finds herself in a conflicting relationship with God throughout her youth, but the narrative sticks mainly to pat revelations. As Catherine grows older, Gilmore struggles to maintain a consistent narrative voice, which jarringly jumps from girlish to womanly. Even with the unladylike qualities of a fiery temper and a quick mouth, Catherine manages to win the love of the most popular boy in town, but as many female protagonists have done before her, she originally shuns him to pursue her own dreams. On her 18th birthday, Catherine escapes to Atlanta, only to be called back home by tragedy. In a not-so-surprising twist, the author delivers the same lesson we’ve heard before: the greatest journeys are those that lead you home again.
Nothing new here.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-39501-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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