by Verna Mae Slone ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1994
A semieducated girl raises her baby sister in the hills of Appalachia in the first third of this century—and tells us about it, very plainly. Twelve-year-old Rennie Slone, a slightly disguised Verna Mae Slone, is left motherless shortly after her sister Sarah Ellen is born. Working to take care of the farm, the house, and the new baby while her preacher father comes and goes as he likes, Rennie struggles. Here, the little things, trite though they often are, do make a difference, and the details of everyday life are interesting, although Slone tends to rush past the smells, the sounds, the colors that make her world special. Rennie's one goal is to send her sister to the school she was forced to leave during her mother's pregnancy. It happens, of course, and her sister even graduates from college—no small feat, but not surprising. In fact, nothing about life up in Kentucky's Lonesome Holler seems unexpected, but perhaps that is as much the fault of the scrambled chronology as it is of Slone's matter-of-fact tone. The brightest spot is when her first cousin Johnnie comes to live with them and soon enough falls in love with Rennie. When she tells him she believes she was born to be a spinster, he moves out, taking the plot with him. Reworking material drawn from her own 80 years (much of it already covered in nonfiction works like What My Heart Wants to Tell, 1979), the author produces a series of front-porch tales, though not a novel. Novels require development, and fiction. Although a preface says that Slone calls her writing ``faction,'' the actual sequence of events in her/Rennie's life as relayed here doesn't make up a story, and Slone keeps her imagination, which glimmers brilliantly at points, in check. Very good tidbits—local history, heartache, and humor—held too close to the vest.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8131-1855-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Univ. Press of Kentucky
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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