Young British writer Dunn debuts with a collection of three stories and a novella exploring—with insight and empathy—the darker sides of suburbia. Taking as her setting the farther suburbs of London, which are close enough to that city for a day of shopping but far enough away to be surrounded by fields, Dunn tells stories of the lower middle class—a class edging up into the middle but still constrained by the need to measure out the smallest pleasures with care. A week's holiday spent in a Spanish pension is saved for all year; children's clothes are bought at rummage sales; and the possession of a car is luxury. The narrator of the title novella, a widowed secretary at a small local elementary school, becomes increasingly concerned with the well-being of her assistant Laura, whose two children are at the school. Laura lives in public housing, is withdrawn, and, unlike her flashy sister Cassie, seems to have been neglected by her mother. But as the narrator's suspicions of the childhood abuse of Laura increase, she learns that she herself has failed not only to understand what really happened, but has never appreciated the stifling psychological pressure that her late husband had exerted on her own daughter, Helen. The three stories describe the return home of a much disliked elder stepsister, nicknamed the ``Snow Queen,'' fleeing an unhappy marriage; a daughter attending her mother's 50th birthday party recalling her mother's unhappiness and depression while raising her and her siblings; and a pregnant middle-aged woman being driven to suicide by her elder daughter's powerful malevolence. First fiction from one of those rare contemporary writers who, by giving her characters' lives a certain integrity, makes their plight credible and not simply a lurid venture into suburban gothic. Promising.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-85242-172-X
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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