After the heady success of Mariette in Ecstasy (1991), Hansen toys with mystery writing in a slick fiction that also continues his last novel's spiritual intrigue. Here, the author deliberately invokes Lazarus and the Prodigal Son in a story that otherwise relies on lots of Hollywood imagery. Atticus Cody, like the Atticus of Harper Lee, is a righteous man in his 60s, a good father who can express himself only indirectly. His younger son, Scott, over 40 and still wandering through life, is home for the holidays, and, as usual, father and son can't communicate. With his history of manic-depression and suicidal bouts, Scott is anathema to his stoic dad, a successful oilman. He also suffers from the guilt of having killed his mother in a car accident after college, and senses his father's blame. All this changes later, though, when Atticus is summoned to Mexico to retrieve Scott's dead body. Shortly after meeting his son's friend in the decadent, expat community on the Gulf Coast, Atticus senses that something's amiss, that Scott didn't commit suicide but was murdered. Atticus's careful detective work is the best way he knows of showing love for his son, and he pursues the mystery with a sense of belated forgiveness and reconciliation. The mystery is more or less resolved two thirds into the novel, when Scott's discovered hiding out among the homeless in a church basement. He then wraps up all the disparate details in a sad tale of accidental murders, blackmail, mistaken identity, and an adrenalin-fueled effort to elude justice. Hansen spares none of the supercilious expatriates and bleeds for the oppressed campesinos with their mystical attachments to the land, making for a fairly predictable subtext. There's a writerly neatness in Hansen's vocabulary of images and allusions, though some seem jammed into the narrative for the sake of it. One suspects—and suspects again, when Scott mentions having a ``movie moment''—that Hansen wrote this one with an eye to the screen, where Mariette is due soon. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-018217-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
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
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