After seven very long years, a new and generous (twenty-two stories) Bradbury collection. At least two Bradburys are in evidence here, of varying interest: the last explorer who showed us the poetry of space and the redundancy of technological gingerbread isn't as much of a revelation as it was a few decades ago. The Bradbury who pursues gentle astonishments just around the corner of our daily boredom is as rewarding as ever. Two of the best stories feature an old priest who casts out the demon of an agonized "chocolate junkie," and a young spaceman, holding long, treasured conversations with a robot replica of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. In the village of Dandelion Wine, twelve-year-old Doug Spaulding desperately resists the food which is "poisoning" his body into adulthood and the classroom learning which is erasing the clear imprint of his child-self. There's an unexpected jeu d'esprit when a Martian kidnapper swipes the Cuban parrot rumored to have committed Papa's (Hemingway) last unwritten novel to memory. In a startlingly bleak vein, a dreadful Mexican trip drives a bullied young wife the last hairsbreadth toward a madness which is the hopeless complement of her husband's. Bradbury has never been afraid of the obvious or sentimental. But it is from the same materials that he draws the more frequent moments which make you think of clean woods after thunderstorms—or a soul-destroying city summer and squandered happiness.
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1976
ISBN: 0553228676
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976
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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