Short as it is, this one seems too long by far.
Continuing to cultivate the static side of his sensibilities, the prolific Gifford (The Sinaloa Story, 1998, etc.) here presents a road story featuring a mother and son who drive around the US for a few years, talking about life.
In the 1950s, Roy and his mom are on the road, driving up and down and around America. Roy, a typical young boy, has a lot of questions about where they're going, where they've been, and why his mom and dad aren't together anymore. As she drives, Mom tries to answer as best she can, sugar-coating the truth at times and changing the subject at others; but since theirs is a neverending journey, the questions keep coming, and eventually details of the world Roy inhabits emerge. His dad's friends, whom Roy sees on occasion when he's not driving with Mom, are quintessential noir characters, from the sleepy-eyed ex-prizefighter Buzzy Shy, who wanted a waiter to kiss his fly, to the crooked cop Phil Sharky, who let Roy play with his loaded revolver one night when Dad wasn't around. Despite exposure to this crowd, though, Roy retains his innocence, wanting only to have Mom drive them to Wyoming, where he and his dog would have plenty of room to roam—if he had a dog. But Mom never makes it to Wyoming, and she never stops driving either, not even when they learn that Roy's dad died in a Chicago hospital. Later, when Roy describes his vision of the afterlife, hell is a hole near the equator that people fall into, heaven is a place reached only by tornado, and purgatory is where people "just stay where they are, and they don't even know they're waiting." There's no doubt where he is in that scheme of things.
Short as it is, this one seems too long by far.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-55970-523-X
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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