Hazelgrove debuts in hardcover with an ambitious novel of the twilight years of segregation in Richmond, Virginia, that tries to bebut never quite islike all those great southern stories that celebrate justice overcoming the ties of place and kin. Narrated by 12-year-old Lee Hartwell, the youngest member of an old Virginia family, the story begins in the last year of WW II. In that summer of 1945, Lee's brother Lucas returns from the war, wounded in the foota wound that, of course, raises all sorts of questions about Lucas. But Lucaslike Lee's mother, who needs frequent rest cures, and sister Sally, who's extraordinarily bitterwill remain marginal to Hazelgrove's plot, important more for adding dark texture to an already menacing atmosphere than for providing opportunities for analysis. What really matters here is the trial of a young black woman, Fanny Jones, the daughter of the Hartwells' housekeeper, Addie. This trial, the story's dramatic centerpiece, will test the family, their principles, and their position in a still rigidly segregated society. Fanny, who is accused by her employer, Mr. Hillman, an evil factory owner and political king-maker, of stealing his silver tea service, is defended by Burke Hartwell, Lee's father, simply because it is the right thing to do. The pace picks up as Lee describes the events that led up to the trial: his father's refusal to support Hillman's sleazy senatorial candidate; Fanny's meeting with black organizer Silas Jackson, who is later gunned down; the hostility of old friends to his father's defense of Fanny; and his growing friendship with Careen, Hillman's daughter. Race and sex are, as usual, part of the bigoted nastiness that Burke Hartwell courageously confronts. Too many echoes of other books, too much promised, and yet a moving if flawed reminder of a not-so-distant shameful past, detailed with grace and sensitivity.
Pub Date: July 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-9630052-8-6
Page Count: 308
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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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