Hard-bitten, yet surprisingly moving.
Another brooding and violent tale from Blake (Handsome Harry, 2004, etc.), this one about the boxer best known for almost besting Jack Johnson.
That was in 1909, and the opening chapter shows Ketchel’s and Johnson’s managers agreeing that the match will be a fake, staged to end in a draw so the fighters can make their real money on the rematch. Blake pulls no punches in his portrait of Ketchel, who comes across right away as a bigot and misogynist, offended by Johnson caressing his “bitch” white girlfriend. The story recalls the bleak work of such writers of the period as Stephen Crane and Frank Norris in its stark delineation of Stanley’s abusive father and the boy’s hardscrabble years as a hobo. (His first killing is a fellow vagrant who tries to rape him.) The level of violence only increases as Ketchel discovers his ability with his fists in Butte, Mont., where he makes his reputation inflicting maximum physical punishment—lavishly described—on anyone foolish enough to get into the ring with him. He’s left with even more rage to vent when his one true love shoots herself rather than suffer to the death with throat cancer. It’s all pretty grim, and despite the story’s compulsive readability, it seems for a while that what we’re being given is merely an exercise in sordid naturalism. But Blake slowly and skillfully softens our perception of Ketchel just enough so we can see his yearning for love and his passionate commitment to boxing. “Goddamit, you’re the greatest fighter I ever saw,” he finally admits to Johnson. Racism doesn’t stand a chance against the truth of what Ketchel experiences in the ring. Blinkered and brutal though he is, we begin to hope that Stanley will grow up and find some peace. But the author has warned us from the start that his flawed hero will meet a tragic end.
Hard-bitten, yet surprisingly moving.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-055436-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
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
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