Rueful, quirky writing: in essence, middle-aged chick-lit.
Eleven linked stories develop a character from an award-winning first collection.
Graham’s The Daiquiri Girls (1998) featured four San Franciscan women, one of whom, fortysomething Jane McAllister, now takes center stage in a sequence of connected episodes starting with “Kilter” and “Guest” from Daiquiri. Jane has loved three men—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as she refers to divorced Bert, who fathered her daughter; Andrew, who married her because she was like his mother; and Lars, who died in a car crash. Four years later, Jane is living alone, unhappy at work, menopausal, and ends “Kilter” by taking refuge under the bed. Subsequent stories move her a couple of years into the future, but not far beyond these concerns. In “Twins,” she’s become a clinical psychologist but is dissatisfied with her clients; two stories later, in “The Blue Book of Dogs,” she sells her practice and becomes a dog-walker; three stories beyond that she has moved to Cheever, in northern California, and returned to psychology. Her other preoccupations—principally Lars, sex, and survival—follow equally circular paths. In “Guest” and “In the Realm of the Senses,” she has sexual partners, but they’re predictably fleeting. Author Graham illumines Jane’s world with gallows humor, ranging from the surreal to the simply withering, as in the case of Jane’s stress incontinence. Indeed, the volume is unflinching in its focus on the plight of the single, middle-aged woman and, despite diversions, this is the place to which all the narratives return, sometimes manipulatively—as in “Eyes of Glass,” where Jane’s move to Cheever renders her “friendless, loveless and just about moneyless” all over again. Meanwhile, Elvis becomes a Godot-like mantra of unfulfilled expectation, not just in the title story but also in “Fortune”: as Graham writes, Jane, dreaming of rescue, “might as well expect a proposal from dead Elvis.”
Rueful, quirky writing: in essence, middle-aged chick-lit.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-9728984-4-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Leapfrog
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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