Languid plot, self-conscious writing, unappealing protagonists: in all, an uninspired first outing.
A first novel fulsomely charting the lives of two sisters, smart women who do dumb things until the obligatory life-transforming event makes them wise and contented.
Hall’s protagonists, unfortunately, are so self-centered and obtuse that they evoke irritation rather than sympathy—their respective plights, consequently, seeming less the unfair workings of fate than something well deserved. In her 40s, elder sister Maud, an actress, has been living in L.A. with her lover and trying to succeed in Hollywood. She also desperately wants a baby, but feeling she’s getting nowhere, heads to Marengo, New Mexico, where sister Lizzie lives. Lizzie, who has three children by three different men, is an artist who teaches at a local college and also illustrates greeting cards. She’s opted for single motherhood but might have changed her mind if Jake, the father of Theo, her youngest, hadn’t fled town once he heard she was pregnant. Maud finds work singing in a nightclub, and the two sisters, always jealous of each other, settle into an edgy relationship. Jake, a songwriter and computer expert, is also back in town and wants to make amends, but Lizzie isn’t ready yet to forgive him for his desertion. While she tries to find herself, Maud sleeps with a Native American activist, then with Rich, the young cowboy boyfriend of Jeep (Liz’s babysitter), then gets a starring role in the local drama production. Meanwhile, she’s also drawn to Jake, who’s similarly tempted. Jeep’s attempted suicide after finding she’s pregnant, and the death of Sam, an old lover and tenant of Lizzie’s, seem tossed in to add drama to a sagging narrative. Family ties will win out, while other affirming connections and insights will enable Maud and Lizzie finally to act smart before it’s too late.
Languid plot, self-conscious writing, unappealing protagonists: in all, an uninspired first outing.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-345-43970-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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