Said to be a grand success in Europe, 24-year-old Jenny’s novel, to a reader this side of the Atlantic, seems to be made mainly of youthful airs and posturings. When she’s a preschooler (in 2000, she tells us, she—ll be 24) and her mother leaves, Jo stays with her heavy-smoking father, who, as a labor of love, publishes books—and who takes up also, for a while, with the boozy and blowsy Eliane. Later, Jo is 18 or so and old enough to escort her reappeared mother Lucy to her shrink appointments—these needed, we learn, because of Lucy’s breakdown after the death-by-car (or suicide-by-car) of Alois, Lucy’s painter-lover. Exactly why Jo has gone back to stay with her mother isn—t altogether clear, but that Lucy is a lightweight mom and that the relationship is very iffy indeed are evident enough. The heavy significance of the failed mother-child bond that’s clearly felt by Jo, however, fails to translate into anything even remotely felt by the reader, with disastrously thinning effects for the novel. During her breakdown, Lucy closed herself in an empty room with nothing in it but gathered pollen—a fact that gives the book its title but little else, since elsewhere Lucy seems little more than a shallow middle-ager looking for a rich man and hoping not to get wrinkly too fast. Jo, meanwhile, suffering through her impacted case of angst, meets wannabe pop singer Luciano; street musician Rea; takes Ecstasy; goes to a rave; has sex; gets pregnant; has “the abortion—; then the breakdown; makes a last visit to father (a nonsmoker now, with a new, pregnant wife); and at end walks alone to the outskirts of town to watch the snow fall. Effortful throughout, and maybe even deeply felt. The result, though, is no more moving than a long pout, like living for 160 pages with a teenager who knows nothing and insists on telling you all of it.
Pub Date: March 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85458-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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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