Powerful, dramatic and sensitive.
In this novel, set in 1948, a young nun teaching at a Catholic boarding school is challenged by her new pupil, who feels angry and abandoned.
Helene Rhenehan, 10, lost her mother to a car accident four years ago. Now, her surgeon father is going on a lecture tour in Italy and plans to leave her for six months at a girls’ boarding school run by the distinguished Convent of the Sacred Heart. Strongly believing in discipline and rules, the school mainly teaches girls who are, like Helene, “from Chicago’s Gold Coast or opulent suburbs.” Mother Mary Agnes Adelli, set to take her final vows the next year, is a favorite among the girls, and she hopes to win Helene over and help her be happy. But Helene’s rage at being left behind is boundless—more so as she stokes her anger to push down tears. Her unashamed, rule-breaking defiance soon has Mother Adelli in trouble with her superiors, who tell her to figure it out and enforce rules more harshly. This brings Mother Adelli into a terrible struggle with her conscience, balanced against her vow of obedience and need to control her students, who turn against her when Helene’s misbehavior brings punishments for the whole group. When something terrible happens, Mother Adelli must re-examine her whole life, especially the decisions that led her to give up a ballet scholarship to become a nun. Keithley (3/Chicago, 2013, etc.) brings the convent boarding school to life (you can almost smell the floor wax), with all its power struggles, affections and little routines. Characterizations are psychologically acute and well-rounded: Helene, for instance, is absolutely maddening while at the same time sympathetic, since no one is paying proper attention to her. The religious figures run the gamut, neither monotonically good nor bad. The reader’s knowledge of the huge changes to come in the church after Vatican II (not to mention present-day scandals) adds a layer of irony to the school’s emphasis on rules, order, conformity and discipline.
Powerful, dramatic and sensitive.Pub Date: March 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496186553
Page Count: 268
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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