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TEN STORIES

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Novelist Cumbo (Boarding Pass, 2012) renders key moments of ordinary people’s lives in his debut collection of short stories.
Cumbo, a prep school teacher in Buffalo, New York, starts his collection with “The Bike.” Told from the perspective of a dying Vietnam War soldier, the story then shifts to young Stevie McHugh, living in fictional Lawson, New York, who meets the soldier’s grieving father after he and a pal spot a “bright red bike” on the man’s property. Stevie then experiences coming-of-age awareness about sex in “Thunderbird,” thanks to a visiting older cousin’s fling with a glamorous woman who later shows up at Stevie’s first day of high school. “Late Dinner” explores the changing perceptions of new parents when a friendly waitress offers to watch over their baby. In “Chalk,” that dusty writing tool elicits a retiring teacher’s reflections. “Valediction” finds superachiever Madeline sobbing over a college love affair, her first significant miscalculation; “Phoenix, Arizona,” traverses time and country to track a man’s journey to getting married; and “Half Past Twelve” recounts a Scottish college student’s brief encounters with an American girl. Other offerings include “Park Avenue,” about a Princeton grad learning what’s in store for his investing career, and “Silverback,” in which a girl eyes a zoo gorilla after shoplifting a candy bar. Cumbo certainly delivers on his vision of realistic fiction that “resonates precisely because it might as well have happened.” Cumbo’s tales feature a spectrum of sympathetic characters and plausible situations and ably deliver telling details (chalk, etc.) and expressive sentences: “It was all pennies,” muses the “Silverback” girl, connecting her guilt to the taste of copper. Some entries will naturally be more compelling than others, but overall, this author provides ruminative, true-to-life fiction.
Elegant writing that captures the minor revelations of everyday experiences.

Pub Date: July 22, 2013

ISBN: 978-0988208629

Page Count: 164

Publisher: One Lane Bridge

Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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