Pursuing themes and situations near to the heart of her five previous novels (The Looking-Glass Lover, 1989, etc.), Perrin here places a troubled young woman on an upstate New Jersey communal farm, where she must cope with an inadequate marriage—as well as with her severely dysfunctional family—before discovering who she is and what she really wants from life. It's the summer of '72 when love, or the idea of it, brings 25-year-old Liz Stillwell to the farm at Cool's Ridge. There, she reunites with the wealthy, elusive charmer Skip, with whom she's had an intermittent romance since college. But his ongoing aloofness and the group dynamics of the place—a tangle of confused relationships and a commitment to setting up a community newspaper, with Skip's backing—confound her. Meanwhile, her arrival at the farm coincides with her parents' divorce; Liz not only has to contend with emotional upheaval from that but also with the aftermath, as her father remarries and her mother becomes terminally ill, raising difficult questions as to who will care for her hopelessly schizophrenic, often institutionalized brother. Although she's attracted to the brooding, brainy Leonard, the paper's editor and husband of the beautiful Alice, who seems to have a thing for Skip, Liz turns to her old lover as a safe port in the storm, eventually marrying him. Their relationship barely improves, however, and when, shortly after her mother's death, brother John goes AWOL and comes to visit, quickly becoming a suspect when a neighbor is murdered, Liz has to leave the farm. Returning to her mother's house, she finally finds the support and tranquility she needs, within herself. Any writer pounding out the same thematic chords in successive works risks redundancy, but here the notes sounded seem to sink deeper in, giving characters a worn but comfortable feel, and their personalities a subtle, complex texture that comes from aging well.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-877946-68-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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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