by John Prendergast ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1995
Shallow characters and mediocre angst, in a debut novel that often reads like an outline for a novel. It's President's Weekend 1984, and former college pals Walter, Nancy, Dave, and Patrick are spending it together at a Vermont ski- cabin. It's been years since the group was reunited, and all hope for a time of reconnection. But Walter, our narrator, can't enjoy himself. Though he and Nancy have lived together for five years, their relationship is strangely cool, and now, with the reappearance of Dave, a good-looking womanizer, the two pull even farther apart. Walter suspects that Nancy is in love with Dave, but he can't bring himself to confront her. Instead, he lets Dave's niece make a play for him, then feels guilty...and then spends the rest of the weekend reliving his childhood traumas and those golden days of college, whenever he and the group aren't consuming booze or drugs. A few verbal digs are directed at Patrick's homosexuality, but, generally, everyone's too self-absorbed to notice that other people exist. And herein lies the novel's central failure: Prendergast's characters are simply too self-centered to be compelling. They're big children, living for the moment's gratification, making the reader entirely apathetic as to their fates. Some empathy is created when Walter recalls his mentally unstable and abusive mother, but these episodes aren't enough to carry the story. The numerous attempts to generate sexual tension similarly fail, sex to those here seeming as meaningful as a good toothbrushing. A wealth of detail is present from start to end, but it rarely helps in summoning up a worldmuch like the political references that are found throughout, though failing to make any larger point. A plodding, tedious, lukewarm version of The Big Chill, minus the original's tension and conflict.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-922811-23-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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by John Prendergast & Fidel Bafilemba photographed by Ryan Gosling illustrated by Sam Ilus
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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
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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
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