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THE SLOW AIR OF EWAN MACPHERSON

Decently done but unremarkable: second-novelist Averill (Secrets of the Tsil Café, 2001) creates some memorable characters...

A fair-to-middling coming-of-ager set in Kansas, where the flatness of the plains can’t obscure the dark shadows of family secrets cast long ago in Scotland.

Glasgow, Kansas, has very little in common with its Scottish counterpart other than its name and the presence of Rob MacPherson. Born and reared in the Gorbals slums of the old Glasgow, Rob came to the new one in 1952 with his infant son Ewan in tow. Mourning his wife (who’d died in childbirth while crossing the Atlantic and was buried at sea) and homesick for his native land, Rob manages to settle into life in the new world, finding work at the post office and acquiring some renown for his skill with the bagpipes as well as the ladies. Ewan, by contrast, grows up a quiet and reserved young man not much given to his father’s favorite pastimes of whiskey and adultery. He does fall in love, though, with Shirley Porter—the daughter of one of Rob’s many conquests. After high school, Ewan and Shirley court scandal by moving in with each other while still unmarried, an arrangement that Rob encourages, somewhat to his son’s surprise. When Ewan discovers Shirley and his father in flagrante delicto, his surprise turns to outrage. He can break off with Shirley (and does), but he’s stuck with his father, an untrustworthy jerk but the only blood kin Ewan has left in the world. Or so he thinks: The discovery of a secret family album gives Ewan a new and unsuspected insight into his origins and leads him to retrace his father’s steps back to Glasgow in search of his mother. The truth, when it comes, is as sad as family secrets can be—but it explains a lot more than the past.

Decently done but unremarkable: second-novelist Averill (Secrets of the Tsil Café, 2001) creates some memorable characters but does little with them, and the lost-mother theme seems very old hat by now.

Pub Date: July 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-425-19081-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: BlueHen/Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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