A very serious novel that doesn’t pull any punches but telegraphs too many of them.
A ponderous novel about the way war continues to rage inside those who have experienced its horrors firsthand.
There are two narratives in the fourth novel by Powell (The Dark Corner, 2012, etc.), whose fiction was previously associated with the Appalachian south but who here extends his reach from coast to coast as well as to such hotspots as Iraq and Afghanistan. The first strand concerns Luther Redding, a drone pilot from Florida who stalks targets in Afghanistan. He seems to be the protagonist until he disappears from the novel, though his absence remains a strong presence in the lives of his wife and two teenage daughters. In case the reader has missed the thematic point, the novel explains from the perspective of the older daughter, “Lucy talked about her family. For the last three years she had witnessed their collapse scarily mirror that of the nation.” They had enriched themselves on paper through real estate speculation, but their fortune fell apart like a house of cards. Luther’s assignment seems like a similar illusion—video game as war. His wife laments “the ossification of their marriage….That dry heap she felt blow by her, crumb by crumb, every night.” The other plotline concerns two brothers, both veterans suffering the ravages of war, who enlist an accomplice and embark on a cross-country drug run after the younger is released from prison. “The war’s seeped into the groundwater….It’s in our DNA,” says the jailbird to his older brother, who committed a war atrocity, allowed his family to crumble and recognizes that his brother's scam is a really bad idea. There are some parallels between the two sisters and the two brothers, but it’s hard to see how these plots might intersect. But they must. And through some authorial sleight of hand, they do.
A very serious novel that doesn’t pull any punches but telegraphs too many of them.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61117-434-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Story River Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
