Though occasionally preachy, the novel is both heartfelt and moving.
A post-9/11 novel examining how that traumatic event shapes the lives of the narrator and a college professor, as well as the lives of those she teaches.
Although the novel takes place in Boston rather than New York City, the shadow of the events of 9/11 looms over the urban landscape. Erika teaches an international group of health professionals and has them write research papers relevant to their personal and political interests, but she also broods on the meaning of the events of 9/11. Her students become aware that academic research and writing are too abstracted from real life, a point driven home by Honig as she switches the narrative to scenes in Nairobi, where dreadful exploitation and unimaginable violence are being visited upon children as young as 12. This theme of distancing oneself from the real world pervades the novel, particularly through characters such as Nussbaum, a bully who’s named chair of the department and who’s preoccupied with his own petty power, and Toby, who writes grants for sociological studies in Africa but who has never been there himself. In response to the social evil found in Kenya one character tries to help those who are being oppressed and is fired for violating rules meant to ensure “objectivity.” The most touching character is Ibrahim, a Sudanese doctor to a sheik. Ibrahim is kind, loving and curious, but he’s stricken with cancer, and his patience teaches Erika much about the process of dying. In an insult to his virtue, his brother-in-law is arrested on suspicion of—what else in this post-9/11 world?—terrorism. Honig constructs a world of goodness circumscribed by evil, of good deeds done in the context of overwhelming misery.
Though occasionally preachy, the novel is both heartfelt and moving.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58243-527-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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
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