A standout addition to the crowded archive of Austen homages.
An American librarian discovers a never-published Jane Austen manuscript.
Samantha has accompanied her cardiologist boyfriend, Stephen, to London. While he attends a medical conference, she explores the environs of Oxford University, where she had pursued a doctorate in English literature before abandoning her studies to care for her dying mother. While browsing in a musty bookstore, Sam comes across a volume of poetry which contains an unfinished letter that her practiced eye (she’s now a rare-books librarian) identifies as having been written by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. The letter mentions an early manuscript, circa 1802, which the then-unknown future authoress had mislaid at a Devonshire country house called Greenbriar. Anthony, a venture capitalist and the latest heir to Greenbriar, is happy to help locate the manuscript, particularly if its auction proceeds can save Greenbriar from creditors and fund his own startup. The manuscript, entitled The Stanhopes, is found in a secret compartment, and Sam and Anthony sit down to read the novel in its entirety, along with the reader. The Stanhopes is a very passable Jane Austen facsimile, with believable period locutions, much shorter sentences and more melodrama. (It would, after all, have been Jane’s first novel.) The plot details the fortunes of a village pastor, the Rev. Stanhope, whose wealthy patron casts him out of his parish, home and livelihood on a charge of gambling away church funds. When Stanhope is supplanted by the patron’s own nephew, the reverend’s clever, beautiful and musically gifted daughter, Rebecca, correctly smells a rat. Nevertheless, until his innocence can be proven, father and daughter must embark on an itinerary of exile during which they are reduced to relying on the at-times-dubious charity of close or distant relatives. This richly imagined Jane Austen “road novel” is such a page turner that the frame story, with its obvious but far less dramatic parallels to Rebecca and Stanhope’s plight, seems superfluous.
A standout addition to the crowded archive of Austen homages.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-425-25336-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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