A murky, ingrown tale of violence and homosexual attraction by the author of The Story of Annie D. (1989) and Harmony (1990). The story opens with Katherine Von Vechten floating prettily to her death, in 1968, having crashed through a skylight of the country club in Cedar Hill, Iowa, and then it jumps forward 25 years as Katherine's husband Bader returns to Cedar Hill, having learned of the death of Roy Kimbel. Roy who? (Chehak's latest is nothing if not confusing.) Very slowly, it emerges that the two key years are 1919 and 1968. In 1919, a rift occurred between the town's leading families when 15-year-old Wolfgang Von Vechten, disapproving of his mother's remarriage to her dead husband's business partner Horace Craig, shot old Craig to death and then hanged himself. The surviving Craig sent the surviving Van Vechtens packing. Forward to 1968. Wolfgang's nephew Bader, both his parents dead in a car crash, shows up in Cedar Hill, a presentable college graduate. Has he come to practice law, sell real estate? Fat chance. Bader's mission is to write a book about Wolfgang's crime, but he's distracted by the delectable Katherine Craig, whom he marries in short order, though her charms have already paled beside those of 15-year-old Lee Kimbel, son of Bader's blue-collar neighbor Roy. (Curiously, the Kimbels, a thoroughly depressing bunch, get far more attention than the Craigs.) It is here that Katherine, suspecting she has a rival, sails through the skylight; soon after, Lee, protecting Bader from Katherine's old man Archie, shoots him with the exact same shotgun Wolfgang used, then kills himself. Before leaving town, Bader confesses his love for Lee to Roy and is beaten to a pulp by the outraged father. ClichÇ-ridden nonsense.
Pub Date: May 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-395-60198-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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