Norris beautifully captures the intimacies of family life, but his self-consciously literary design only highlights the...
Moving backward over 25 years, a series of verbal snapshots chronicle the history of a middle-class Catholic family from suburban New Jersey: a flawed but promising debut.
The Mahoneys are introduced in 1997 as they individually prepare to gather for Christmas at the beach house where their retired parents now live. Pat, who sometimes feels “misplaced” in his own home, and Liz, whose private longings have never quite been realized, are lovingly drawn but seem prematurely aged for a couple barely in their 60s. Thirty-five-year old Kate, the emotionally fragile oldest sister, takes medications that dull her senses but keep her sane and securely married. Second sister Patty, a single Manhattan doctor who’s just quit drinking, worries how the family will react when she reveals her alcoholism. Brother Sean flies in from London, where he’s a chef. Baby sister Nora is a large-animal vet who also happens to be happily gay. Norris jumps back five or so years at a time to trace how the siblings reached their present state. Kate struggles with recovery, breaks down for the first time, and shows intense sensitivity and artistic promise as a child. Brainy Patty verges on self-destruction as a reckless lush, drinks as a novice pediatrician to escape the trauma of dealing with dying children, juggles her adolescent good-girl facade with a secret life of drugs and sex, wins her father's favor with her bookishness. Nora falls in love with another woman, comes to awareness of her sexuality in adolescence, plays her role as family baby for all its worth. Sean, perhaps acting as the author’s stand-in, remains more an observer than a player over the years, defined largely by his reactions to the others.
Norris beautifully captures the intimacies of family life, but his self-consciously literary design only highlights the predictability and lack of genuine drama here.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2001
ISBN: 1-57322-183-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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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