This novel’s headiness might seem daunting, but readers who take a patient approach will find a deeply rewarding and often...
Family histories, cinematic obsessions, fractured relationships, and the films of Luis Buñuel converge in this pensive novel set in London and Spain.
The plot of Medina’s novel, which abounds with references to art, cinema, and literature, takes a little while to get going. When it does, however, the story it tells is a powerful and mysterious one. The novel is structured as the reminiscences of Nina, a Spanish woman living in London, looking back at a period of her life lasting several years. (“I was in time to witness the last vestiges of the punk civilization,” she writes early on.) Concerns over Nina’s father’s health lead her to find a mysteriously vast archive of shoes kept by her late mother, who had worked as an actress for a time. And what emerges slowly from this is a web of obsessions and fetishes, from the wealthy collector gathering props from the films of surrealist film giant Buñuel to the shoe and foot fetishes that turn up in some of Buñuel’s films to the unknowable desires of Nina’s parents. Throughout the novel, primal desires and heady discussions of artistic theory exist in a state of relative balance. One character is described as “an emissary of sensuality whose rubbery mouth was an unaware conduit for unusual unconscious ticks.” And at one point, Nina describes a particularly charged scene in the city: “I drifted along libidinal streets, sinister streets, listless streets....” These moments are balanced with lengthy musings on art, memory, and philosophy—which, given the occupations of many of the characters, seems entirely fitting.
This novel’s headiness might seem daunting, but readers who take a patient approach will find a deeply rewarding and often haunting narrative emerge.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62897-086-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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