A maudlin debut novel by a young Brit about romantic failure, filled with trendy musings on the transgressive (S/M, child abuse, pornography) in contemporary culture. Gabriel Jones, the narrator, offers us a long look back at his impossibly tragic, sordid life. He is currently living in London in a kind of limbo, and he hopes that by mulling over his past failures he can come to grips with the demons that drive him. “Begin with Hope,” he tells himself, but he isn—t talking about the emotion. Hope turns out to be the expensive prostitute who gets him over his bouts of despair about Alicia, whose love he betrayed because of Katherine. In fervid, gushy prose—some of it quite good, yards of it over the top—Gabriel delivers what feels like the longest college all-night confessional in history. How he fell in love with Alicia: “Nothing prepared me for soulful sex, sex that didn’t retain its lust at the expense of its love, sex . . . with someone I genuinely liked.” How Alicia, by deciding to do a feminist study of porn, introduced the worm—a centerfold spread that reminds Gabriel of how, when he was eight years old, he was initiated into sex by next-door neighbor Katherine, who he then witnessed being abused by a pig-mask—wearing father (as Mummy looked on). How Alicia then finds him diddling an on-stage stripper with a cherry lollipop (can’t help himself, it’s in his childhood). Six years later, Gabriel is offered a chance reunion with the lovely Alicia. But Hope is retiring that very night, and when Gabriel shows up to pay his respects, he happens to be wearing a pig mask (went to a costume party, you know), which shocks Hope into revealing herself as . . . Katherine. Too traumatized to keep his rendezvous with Alicia, Gabriel sinks into his current state of picturesque decline. Unpleasant and unpersuasive: politically correct prudery mixed with unbridled sex.
Pub Date: May 28, 1998
ISBN: 1-57322-094-9
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
bookshelf
