Bleached of genuine drama or human interest, an excellent driving-in-the-car-while-looking-for-parking-place-near-the-beach...
Shea’s lackluster fourth (Lily of the Valley, 1999, etc.) follows a woman’s recollection of a formative summer on a pony farm—when her best friend kidnapped a baby and stole her boyfriend.
With bland prose that expends itself in quantities far more impressive than the simple points it tries to make, Shea introduces 40-ish Robyn Panek as she returns to her Uncle Pal’s horse farm in Massachusetts to sell the old place. Uncle Pal, widowed for some years, has recently fallen ill and is intent on getting rid of it. Shea stirs memories as Robyn recalls the girlhood summer she spent on the farm, when the overbearingly named Lucy Dragon, a distant relative, showed up for a visit in the aftermath of a suicide attempt. Robyn asserts that this had been shocking for her, but Shea never really gives the reader a feel for it, aside from some stale “I remember I went to a mental institution once and it was scary” anecdotes from Lucy. Robyn had also been in love with goodhearted Frankie, the delivery boy from the local dairy, and shortly after Lucy arrived, she began flirting with him. Lucy then snatched a nearby baby and hid out with Frankie for a few days, until the three of them were caught. Robyn fled, but two decades later, Lucy herself, now an established realtor, shows up to help sell the farm. She’s in a giving-something-back sort of mood and confides to Robyn that she’d been pregnant, had been forced to give the child up for adoption, and was feeling some baby-yearning that summer. Frankie shows up, too, tells Robyn the dark secret of hiding with Lucy, and owns up to the fact that he’s still in love with Robyn. They get together, but one morning both the prized horses and Lucy go missing. Mad reenactment of a past horror? Not to worry: Lucy’s been swinging a sweet deal that leaves everyone happy.
Bleached of genuine drama or human interest, an excellent driving-in-the-car-while-looking-for-parking-place-near-the-beach read.Pub Date: July 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-0375-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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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