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YOUTH IN REVOLT

Payne—who formed his own press and self-published this novel, his first, in 1993—shoots for Holden Caulfield but winds up with Ferris Bueller in this overly long pastiche of teen clichÇs and YA fantasies. Nick Twisp is a precocious 14-year-old Californian with divorced parents. His floozy mother neglects him, while his equally libidinous father alternately avoids and exploits poor Nick. Naturally, Nick is obsessed with losing his virginity and hopes to do so with the girl of his dreams, Sheeni, a pretentious would-be teen philosopher who longs to run off to Paris. To win her, Nick involves himself in a variety of absurd capers, including: burning down half of Berkeley after jettisoning a trailer stolen from his mother and one of her boyfriends; getting himself thrown out of his mother's house so that he can live with his father and thus be closer to Sheeni (only to see her transfer to a French-speaking school farther away); tricking a naãve girl into drugging Sheeni's roommate; applying for a scholarship to study in India; and finally disappearing, only to reappear in drag so as to be closer to the girl who has grown to hate him because of his increasingly annoying and failed machinations. Payne uses Nick as a vehicle to deliver many funny set-pieces, yet he steamrolls right over anything resembling real emotion, as Nick possesses none of the fallibility or social awareness of other fictional diary-writers—the title character, for instance, of Sue Townsend's much more compelling The Adrian Mole Diaries (1986). Meanwhile, Payne's obvious verbal skills betray him as he tries too hard to impress—``sobriquet,'' ``hirsute virility,'' and ``tumescent loins'' improbably appearing in Nick's very first entry. Payne's talent occasionally peaks through this John Hughes- like romp, but hold out—and hope for—a better, more mature second effort.

Pub Date: April 14, 1995

ISBN: 0-385-47693-0

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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