Translated from its original French and published previously in England: a novella-length entertainment chronicling the imagined life of Napoleon after St. Helena. Leaving a look-alike behind him on St. Helena, Napoleon is smuggled away on shipboard, passing for a common cabin-hand. That an ingenious international plot is afoot by which the emperor will secretly reenter Europe counts for nothing when Napoleon's ship lands in Antwerp instead of Bordeaux, with the result that Napoleon entirely misses his underground contact, ``a man with a mustache, wearing a gray top hat, sitting on a barrel, holding a furled umbrella in one hand and a copy of the Financial Herald in the other.'' Alone and unrecognized, and passing as a mere tourist, Napoleon revisits Waterloo, embarks by stagecoach for Paris, is detained at the border for nonpayment of a hotel tab in Brussels, is ``rescued'' by a border guard who recognizes the great man and is still faithful to the Napoleonic cause—and who gives him an address in Paris of other die-hard faithfuls. In that capital city, Napoleon will take up with a poor but good-natured widow, reveal his strategic and tactical brilliance by revivifying her retail melon business—and secretly be shown a lunatic asylum (operated by ``Dr. Quinton'') in which all the inmates believe themselves—but of course—to be Napoleon. An ironically parallel fate awaits the too-late-returned emperor himself: when he reveals to the widow who he really is, she of course politely but resolutely considers him mad; and—after getting caught in a soaking rainstorm—he at last sinks into a final illness, pitied for the quaint madness of believing himself to be Napoleon. Tiny, little, miniature, pleasant enough historical fable with a twist.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-13565-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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
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