by Lynne Sharon Schwartz ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2005
A valiant effort, but Schwartz doesn’t quite pull it off.
Schwartz’s tenth (after Referred Pain, 2004, etc.) may be her riskiest, as it intertwines her familiar fictional territory with the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Things start on a bright September morning when Renata, a linguist, wakes up in bed with her lover, Jack, a recently divorced social worker. After Jack leaves, Renata decides to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, but, partway across, she hears screaming and looks across the river to see “a huge marigold bursting open in the sky.” With this opening, Schwartz focuses on how the attack evokes past traumas, leaving Renata unmoored and jeopardizing her relationship with Jack. We learn that Renata and her twin sister, Claudia, were close until age 16, when Claudia had a daughter (fathered, it turns out, by their uncle), gave the baby up for adoption, then drowned in a nearby river days later. Renata’s father died in a car wreck within the year, and her mother was institutionalized. When Claudia’s daughter, Gianna, was three, the adoptive parents dumped her on Renata, then 19. At seven, Gianna was snatched from a park merry-go-round, leaving Renata bereft and guilty. Now 34, Renata has trouble trusting Jack, or anyone, to stay in her life. Schwartz describes the emotional flavor of the days after 9/11 with great clarity, using quotes from speeches by the president, the makeshift signs put up by those in search of the missing, the memorials, the connections neighbors made in the midst of tragedy and the exhaustion of those who, like Jack, went to the scene to help. But it all bogs down in backstory, and Renata’s irrational conviction that a mute teenager she finds wandering the streets is her niece isn’t believable. Plus, Schwartz undercuts the emotion in scenes between Renata and Jack with detail about Renata’s linguistic interest in a culture that has many terms for loss.
A valiant effort, but Schwartz doesn’t quite pull it off.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58243-299-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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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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