Like its eponymous iceberg, this strained fictional mix of politics, affected profundity, and supposedly comic eroticism is as much about the obvious—a young man’s struggle to lose his virginity—as about what is hidden in the depths: Chilean history. Expatriate author Dorfman (Konfidenz, 1994, etc.) tells the story in flashbacks narrated by Gabriel McKenzie as he prepares a murder/suicide at the 1992 World Expo’s Chilean Pavilion, which boasts an iceberg as its main attraction. The action moves back and forth from Manhattan, where Gabriel lives in exile with his mother, Milagros, to his native land. Milagros, a political activist, left Chile with her son in 1974 after the killing of President Salvador Allende, and Gabriel’s life, further, is haunted by ChÇ Guevara, who died on the October day in 1967 that he was conceived, just hours after Milagros met Crist¢bal Mackenzie at a political rally. The couple marries, but in the meantime Cris has made a bet he will make love every day to his wife; an exhausted Milagros soon gives him permission to sleep with other women as long as he is faithful to her in spirit. This potentially funny and sexy device proves to be neither, and the discussions of Pinochet, capitalism, and Spain’s conquest become more rhetorical rants than perceptive insights. Visiting Chile in 1991, the virginal Gabriel is intimidated by his father’s legendary virility. Then he falls in love with the beautiful Amanda, daughter of one of his father’s friends, visits Antarctica to find the iceberg destined for the Expo, hears much political talk, and finally makes love. Distressed by a disturbing family secret (Amanda may be his sister) and by the lies and schemes that both he and Chile have connived at, he decides on a spectacular resolution. His dead Nanny, though, plots with ChÇ to save Gabriel and his family as they prepare to eat dinner at the Chilean Pavilion. A very busy tale that melts in the frenetic heat of its telling.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-374-21898-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
BOOK REVIEW
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