An unfocused tale of a college kid’s attempts to re-create the decade he missed.
Keith (Irreverent Shorts, 2013) offers a lighthearted romp through the college high jinks of a man born a little too late.
Joseph Roman grew up watching the turmoil of the 1960s and basking in that decade’s musical legacy and cultural optimism. Unfortunately for him, the ’70s don’t share quite the same ethos. As a sophomore studying biology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1973, young Joe is more interested in re-creating the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle he idolizes—mostly the sex and drugs part—than he is in applying himself to his studies. He often skips classes to hang around the dorm or in the nearby woods with his posse. Still, he’s a decent student who earns good grades. He’s also popular: His tricked-out dorm room features a fan rigged to prevent marijuana smoke from drifting into the hall, making it the go-to destination for his fellow Hyer Hall denizens. He spends his days planning pranks, getting high and trying to date the girl of his dreams. His pranks, however, predictably run afoul of the stern dorm director, and before long, Joe is banished from the dorms—and the comfortable life he’d built there. But our hero soon finds a new living arrangement and a lucrative source of income. The scattered plot progresses as Joe spreads his wisdom of the hippie counterculture to a receptive, but ultimately apathetic, group of friends. Keith’s light tone telegraphs the fact that Joe will land on his feet, and his adventures are often humorous. However, he sometimes parodies popular song lyrics in a misguided attempt to inject additional levity into the proceedings (“One pill helps with foosball, / And one pill makes you limp”); random illustrations also appear throughout the text, seemingly for the same purpose, but add nothing. The prose is often clunky and unsubtle; for example, the lone African-American dorm resident introduces himself as “one of those highly sought-after, token Negro dudes from the inner city of Milwaukee.” Overall, this paean to the ’60s could’ve done with more nuance and some tighter editing.
An unfocused tale of a college kid’s attempts to re-create the decade he missed.Pub Date: March 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615918655
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Robert Keith
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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