A complex, absorbing, and occasionally moving read.
A thoroughly unsentimental novel told from 10 different perspectives, all having at their center Beatrice (who renames herself “Christmas”), a 13-year-old dying of cancer.
Parker sets himself a difficult task here—telling the story of a young girl with cancer in a way that doesn’t try to wring a cheap emotional response from readers. What makes this easier is the character of Christmas herself, who is at times wise, opinionated, angry, recalcitrant, sarcastic, and mean. The narrative is told in fragments by 10 people who have come in contact with Christmas, often in extraordinarily brief encounters. The facts are simple: Christmas Danzig has recently been put in the care of her Aunt Nikki because her father, Otto, has died, and her “wide-eyed, dipshit, junkie mother” is unable to care for her. Far from being grateful, Christmas runs away and winds up encountering a variety of characters, some good-hearted and others merely eccentric. Parker is a master of tonal complexity, for these encounters can range from the hilarious to the poignant to the enigmatic, often within the same story. One of Christmas’ most moving encounters doesn’t even involve physically meeting another character but rather corresponding with Dorothy, a woman who’s started the Dear Dorothy blog about The Wizard of Oz. When Christmas posts that she wants to meet the woman behind the blog, a correspondence develops that opens Dorothy up emotionally—until she discovers that her boyfriend has been faking some of Christmas’ letters. In another story a woman named Evie feverishly prepares for GlitterFest, a subculture that gives meaning to her life, and only at the very end of the story does Christmas appear and express a desire to see the show. The final story, from the perspective of Aunt Nikki and written after Christmas’ death, provides a more thorough overview of Christmas’ life and of her effect, both good and bad, on others.
A complex, absorbing, and occasionally moving read.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-945814-46-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
APPRECIATIONS
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