In Osborn's vitriolic first novel, a young woman grapples with the crippling legacy of her dysfunctional family—a struggle charged with universal loathing and extreme self-pity, making for an unusually unpleasant debut. It was the prosperous late 1950's and the Arbuthnot family lived like many others, apparently, in their roomy suburban house in New Jersey. While Mrs. Arbuthnot, a German-American housewife, devoted herself to Weight Watchers meetings and the Kennedy campaign, Shep, her husband, worked hard as an ad executive for a food packager; older brother Kyle earned stellar grades in preparation for life as a philosophy professor; and sister Megan tagged along after her father, playing the quintessential daddy's girl. But all was not as it seemed. In fractured prose, fantasy, and fragments of dreams, a grown-up Megan recalls how her father's alcoholism gradually destroyed the fabric of this already loosely knit family, leading to a catalogue of depravities—including corporate corruption, marital infidelity, and the sexual abuse of Megan herself. Mrs. Arbuthnot's efforts to conceal—beneath a cloak of respectability—her husband's activities only increased the suffering as Shep ever more brazenly assaulted his daughter and withdrew from his son, as Kyle fought against his mother's smothering love, and as Megan dreamed of escape and protection. Even after Shep's business crimes are finally discovered, his wife divorces him, and the family scatters across the country, the Arbuthnots' deepest secrets continue to fester, corrupting all those who keep them. The result is a wreck with no survivors and a story with no heroes—a timely but irritating tale.
Pub Date: Feb. 3, 1992
ISBN: 0-8050-1586-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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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