Some chilling moments and marvelous writing, but these characters rarely earn either sympathy or a belief in the degree of...
Poet Flook's first novel gets off to a taut, edgy start, but the self-indulgent characters grow tiresome well before the conclusion.
Protagonist Margaret is the sanest member of the upper-middle- class Rice clan—a blended family composed of the remnants left after death and desertion—but in the aftermath of divorce, she's hooked up with Tracy, an abusive poseur. She tries to stay responsible for the sake of her young daughter, Celeste (when Margaret has sex with Tracy, ``Celeste flickered on and off in the background like a strip of wavering neon'') but is exhausted by the force of Tracy's psychopathic will. He likes to destroy things; sex shades to sadomasochism and can rarely be distinguished from rape. Tracy also zeroes in on other people's obsessions: the erotic undertow between Margaret and stepbrother Cam; Cam's compelling need to find his natural father. When Margaret reluctantly goes home to Delaware to see Cam (despondent over his own divorce), she must deal with her mixed-message-sending stepmother, the father she loves, the stepsister who always resented that closeness. Tracy follows Margaret, influences Cam, and soon the three head to Chicago with stolen car and pilfered petty cash. They take side-trips (including a visit to Margaret's commune-dwelling, love-and- peace-and-sexual-voyeurism stepsister), confront Cam's father, and play out their own triangular relationship in an atmosphere of escalating violence.
Some chilling moments and marvelous writing, but these characters rarely earn either sympathy or a belief in the degree of disturbance they show.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41647-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
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
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