by Julian Rathbone ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1999
A dark-hued lament for the loss of jolly old England a millennium ago, when psychopath William the Conqueror used a bagful of tricks to best good King Harold, this saga from the wide-ranging Rathbone (Blame Hitler, p. 1076, etc.) has its moments but can’t sustain them The story comes out in the halting, painful recollections of Walt, one of Harold’s inner circle of advisers and bodyguards who has wandered far from the Battle at Hastings in 1066, where he lost his right hand as well as his king. Dazed and feverish, Walt has crossed Europe before meeting fellow traveler Quint outside of Constantinople; the ex-monk, realizing Walt has within him a tale that will pass many a weary mile on the road, suggests he pay their way on a journey to the Holy Land. As Walt recalls the time leading up to the Norman invasion, when competing bids for the English throne gave rise to intrigues like the one that brought Harold to Normandy to be tricked by William’s magician into swearing an oath of fealty that would later haunt him, an adventure en route brings them into the company of that same trickster—whom Walt had seen drop dead in Hastings. The conjurer expresses remorse for his earlier role and offers his own memories of William’s preparations, while Walt describes the desperate days after Harold’s coronation, when, faced not only with the Norman threat but another from the north, he had also to quell dissent from within. Walt, healing slowly as he lets go of his grief at not having died with his king, decides to go home before reaching Jerusalem, but not before providing the blow-by-blow details of Harold’s heroic last stand. Popping the clutch once too often in shifting between memory, history, and life on the road, but, still, an often haunting evocation of a tumultuous time of glory and grief.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-24213-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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