A touching compendium of down-home guidance, short on plot but emotionally potent.
In Papritz’s debut novel, a dying father delivers bittersweet words of wisdom in a series of letters to his unborn children.
The story’s unnamed narrator was recently diagnosed with a terminal illness and given seven months to live. He’s also estranged from his wife, who’s pregnant with his twins. He doesn’t want to endanger the pregnancy, so he keeps his illness a secret from her and retires to a mountain cabin. There, he writes the letters that make up this book—a guidebook for the twins about love, loss, childhood, growing up and everything in between. Some of the letters are bubbly and optimistic, extolling the virtues of first kisses and autumn days; others are melancholy and pensive, revealing the narrator’s pain at leaving the world—and his family—too soon. Papritz’s writing overflows with folksy hyperbole, which can be both an asset and a burden. Some readers may roll their eyes at such over-the-top language as “Cause a conniption and a bucketful of mischief. Dance a monkey-doodle.” Often, however, the author’s knack for unusual phrasing makes for fresh, arresting images, as when the narrator writes, “I gather the last remnants of the evening’s breeze, so cool and lazy within my arms, feeling it curl up like a small and innocent kitten.” The novel’s plot is wispy, at best; there’s very little information about the conflict with his wife or the details of his illness, and those looking for a driving story won’t find it here. As a collection of short essays, however, the book is deeply immersive, and it has a strong sense of atmosphere that renders such narrative details hardly necessary. The narrator’s feelings—about the life he’s lived and the death he faces—come off as authentic, and readers will enjoy following him through it. (The author has also published a longer version called The Legacy Letters Complete, which includes audio recordings of the songs that the narrator writes for his children.)
A touching compendium of down-home guidance, short on plot but emotionally potent.Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0985708870
Page Count: 248
Publisher: King Northern, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2013
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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