Despite the misfires: a satisfying, subtly illuminating assortment.
A baker’s dozen (eleven published previously) from the prolific National Book Award–winning Lopez (Arctic Dreams, 1986, etc.), who, here, uses magical flourishes and an intimacy with nature to give many of these tales an unexpected warmth and depth.
Beginning with the first story, “Remembering Orchards,” in which a man in Oregon is brought to remember the stepfather he never had time for in his youth, but whose special talent as a tender of orchards is now abundantly clear, the themes of handwork and being close to the earth are laid bare. “Thomas Loudermilk’s Generosity” echoes and complicates this message, as a much-sought-after, fiercely independent gardener learns just how much respect people have for his gifts when he marries a much younger woman he had hired in her teens and helped put through college. A particular affinity for the Northern Plains works itself out in several pieces, among them “In the Great Bend of the Souris River,” in which a carpenter’s intense search of the North Dakota prairie where he grew up magically reveals a pair of Indians on horseback, who accompany him only long enough for him to regain his bearings. In “The Mappist,” a geographer searches throughout his life for work by a mysterious author whose travel books he revered, then stumbles across maps that lead him to man and his magnum opus, not far from Fargo. Not all stories here have such a shimmering, mystical quality (particularly not the title one), but in a tale like “The Construction of the Rachel,” plot and vision seem nicely in sync: a lawyer loses interest in his former life when his marriage breaks up, then latches on to something sustaining when he constructs a large model of a tall ship from material found along a California beach.
Despite the misfires: a satisfying, subtly illuminating assortment.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-43455-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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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