by Dan Simmons ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2010
There are rewards here, but Simmons (Drood, 2009, etc.) buries an appealing protagonist and an intriguing story under the...
At Little Big Horn, Custer’s ghost enters the body of an 11-year-old American Indian and commingles there for close to 500 pages.
Among the Lakota (Sioux), conventional wisdom has always held that Paha Sapa’s life experience was likely to be unconventional. His very name attests to this. Paha Sapa means Black Hills (South Dakota), and Lakota kids don’t often get named for real places. Add to this the eyebrow-raising fact that in an intensely militaristic society, Paha Sapa marches to a different drummer—a Lakota boy with no aspirations to warrior-hood. Not that he’s effeminate or in any way cowardly—he more than holds his own at tribal rough stuff. It’s just that, well, he seems to think a lot. And then, of course, he gets those visions. Still, his report of what he experienced as the victorious dust settled over Little Big Horn transcends the merely unconventional. Long Hair’s (Custer’s) ghost in so unorthodox a body? Sitting Bull begs to doubt it. As does Crazy Horse, and virtually all the other illustrious war chiefs. But what matters most is that Paha Sapa believes unshakably that he’s ghost-ridden because in a very real sense this shapes his destiny. Through the event-packed years that follow, pivotal conversations continue nonstop between ghost and boy—purely rancorous at the outset, more complex and ambiguous as time passes. These remarkable conversations happen in a variety of famous places: the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, where Paha Sapa’s single love affair suddenly blossoms; Mount Rushmore, where his smoldering anger against white exploitation reaches its apex; and where the visionary Indian and the spectral Indian fighter finally come to terms with each other.
There are rewards here, but Simmons (Drood, 2009, etc.) buries an appealing protagonist and an intriguing story under the crushing weight of a tome.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-00698-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Seven Footer Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
Share your opinion of this book
More by Dan Simmons
BOOK REVIEW
by Dan Simmons
BOOK REVIEW
by Dan Simmons
BOOK REVIEW
by Dan Simmons
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.