As much a game as a book, Lish’s latest doesn’t quite track for the plot-driven. Language lovers will enjoy it, though, and...
Noted editor and somewhat less noted writer Lish (Krupp’s Lulu: Stories, 2000, etc.) serves up a post-Joycean slice of mannered modernism to mark the twilight of his years (“I’m gaining on 90…”).
Things were different back when: people puffed on cigarettes (“It was, in that lovely era, a dreadfully smoky affair”), drank by the gallon, and talked cleverly. Women did not work—most women, anyway. One who did was a long-lived aunt of Lish’s who figures as the catalyst for this odd exercise in belletristic cryptography, or perhaps cryptographic belles-lettres. Adele Deutsch, who was “never again at liberty to advertise herself under her given name once she had been inducted, in the 1950s, into the National Reconnaissance Office,” offers a curious sort of mentorship to young Lish once he in turn decides it’s time to enter the workaday world, for who doesn’t want to be a spy? She serves up a deliciously cunning puzzle that underlies this book, most of which is made up of uppercase words arrayed in a list that begins “FLUSH LEFT” and ends “ALL SMALL CAPS.” In between are words that a crossword-puzzle aficionado would cherish and your average speaker of English would blink at, from Haecceity to Ensorcelled to Monadological. The whole enterprise seems like sheer self-indulgence at first blush, but look closely at the list, and puzzles emerge: why do the first letters of a particular sequence spell “CRAP”? Why is the word Interpellate repeated four times in a row on one page? Turns out that Adele the Spook, conductor of multiple affairs and presidential medal winner, isn’t just a devilishly hard setter of mental tasks, but also fun, smart, and wholly unique, “a one-of-a-kind outcrop of humankind”, qualities nicely commemorated in this literary memorial.
As much a game as a book, Lish’s latest doesn’t quite track for the plot-driven. Language lovers will enjoy it, though, and it’s a sight more challenging than your average morning sudoku.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-939293-94-7
Page Count: 236
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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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