Here, Parker (Small Business, 1986) tries to understand a mother he barely knew—in a thin novel whose fictional protagonist remains equally elusive. Noting that his mother disappeared when he was 15, Parker proceeds to tell the story of Austrian-born Anna Moser, who changes her first name each time she changes her life. The daughter of ill- matched parents—a science-fiction writer and a dancer—Anna is a gifted pianist as a child, but by adolescence apparently has lost interest. She becomes a clerk in a fancy Viennese store, along with friend Cybelle, who soon leaves to work as a maid in England. The time is the late 1930's, so Anna, who is Jewish, also leaves, though she never seems to understand quite what is going on. In England—a barely credible and mercifully brief interlude—she becomes Ann, the household maid. Though the Nazis now control Austria, Ann impulsively returns in 1938 to Vienna. There, raped by German soldiers, she flees to old friends, the Hartmanns, whose doctor-son Peter just happens to have American visas for him and Ann. They marry immediately, sail to New York, then soon move on to Florida, where Peter has a job. Peter is very decent but dull, so when handsome refugee David, whom Anna met earlier in New York, turns up, it's not long before she ditches Peter and marries David. Anna works as a demonstration pianist; a son, Will, is born; but by 1950, David has found someone else. Anna, now in her final incarnation, takes up with brutish but generous Jake and becomes Annie, because it ``sounds familiar, fun, perhaps ever exuberant.'' By the close, though, Jake's questionable enterprises, his rough friends and rough ways will all prove too much for Annie. Little from the surface ever connects to substance in a novel that is more incident than insight. Poor ``Anna, Ann, Annie'' is finally An-onymous, unknown and unknowable.
Pub Date: June 8, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93607-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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
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