While Florence’s declining fortunes in a crass city are well described, her failure to achieve any wisdom about her life...
Vaguely matured author Janowitz (By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee, 1996, etc.) creates a well-rounded, static character, smartly walks her through New York’s social paces, and succeeds in creating a fully adequate novel.
Janowitz characters once were indifferent to the harms they caused others, but Florence Collins at least justifies her innocence. Collins, a 32-year-old unmarried, underpaid employee at an auction house makes the mythic summer pilgrimage to the Hamptons, where Natalie and her husband, John, entertain in high style. Natalie is a winner in Florence’s eyes, having married a wealthy, if unfulfilling, husband. After a trio of mishaps, Natalie accuses Florence of stealing her husband, destroying her sumptuous home, and attempting to drown her child, Claudia (who dies weeks later). Naturally, Florence is exiled back to New York, where her hunt for a mate takes precedence over paying her bills, maintaining her dignity, and keeping her job and her friends. She fruitlessly dates Italian playboy Rafaello, is accused of Claudia’s murder, and spurns the love of sincere-but-penniless Daryl. Meanwhile, she stumbles on a sack of valuable jewelry intended for the auction house, and when fired from the job, she keeps the gems. After a crack-smoking night with Rafaello, Florence is evicted from her apartment, loses the precious jewels, and John scams her out of her last $25,000. And it seems sincere Daryl is secretly wealthy. Though the pace of Florence’s tumble slackens in the second half of the story, the parties, openings, and crack highs are deftly sketched. Yet she learns nothing from her travails: she is an unchanging sensibility in a fickle world. Luck has it that she finds the jewels in the end, her transparent personality unaltered.
While Florence’s declining fortunes in a crass city are well described, her failure to achieve any wisdom about her life makes it hard to sympathize with her misfortunes.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-49610-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999
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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