Robbins's wordy, phantasmagoric smorgasbord reveals a master chef filigreeing and flaying with utmost skill, But hungry readers will ultimately wonder, "Where's the beef?" His latest multilayered, zeitgeist-rich romp (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1976, etc.) focuses on Gwendolyn, a money-obsessed Seattle stockbroker we meet on the day the market crashes. That same day Gwendolyn's boyfriend's born-again, formerly thieving pet monkey runs away; an arrogant tall dark stranger, an ex-stockbroker who has rectal cancer and who has come back from Africa with cosmic knowledge as to why frogs are disappearing around the world, insinuates himself into her life; her best friend/psychic, a 300-pound woman, vanishes into thin air; and a mysterious Japanese doctor comes to town to tell the world about his simple cure for colon cancer. Over the weekend Gwendolyn tries to find the monkey and her friend; at the same time she must choose between running off with the stranger, or staying with her stable boyfriend and salvaging her ruined career. Robbins mixes his trademark lighthearted turns of phrase — "the way he pronounces your name, like William S. Burroughs ordering a root beer float, sends a shudder through your lungs" — with a plot that involves global issues like environmental and economic degradation, cancer and AIDS, violence between rich and poor. But some of the serious threads are used solely to lead the reader to shaggy-dog potty jokes. The all-knowing, smug narrator tells us that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and mystic solutions are hinted at, but all we get is a leering, smiley-face conclusion that says, Don't worry be happy, drop out, cure yourself, go get stoned in some far off place, and hope that you will have a cosmic revelation. Fans may initially be enthralled by a literary Oz's grand, terrifying show, but there's nothing but a smirking stoner behind the curtain.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-553-07625-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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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