As journey novels go, this one is pretty much a Cook’s tour of early-20th-century America.
During the first two decades of the 20th century, a young pickpocket sets out across America on a journey that doesn’t take the reader very far.
In his first fiction, British director Parker (the films Midnight Express and The Commitments) follows Thomas Moran, a wily, ingratiating lad from San Francisco whose earthy observations sometimes amuse but too often suggest late-night college bull sessions. Twice in the first chapter, Moran observes that “nothing’s free in America”—how true, how true. An obstreperous youth, Moran flees a Catholic correctional home, leaving his mother and two sisters behind as he becomes a vagabond pickpocket—and why not? As Moran says, “The mudsnoots on Wall Street, like me, had their hands in everyone’s pockets.” The first half of Parker’s smoothly written, lightly amusing narrative offers some effective, picaresque moments, as when the crowd at a circus lynches the elephant that trampled a spectator. But less than trenchant are other episodes, prefaced in the style of Dos Passos with brief accounts of national events linked superficially to what follows. From a report detailing the successful integration of escaped mental patients into society, Moran concludes, “Who’s to know who’s crazy?” The second half is rather uninspired in plot, and in form seems awkwardly joined to the episodic first half. Moran returns to California and enters in a romantic relationship with Effie, a grape grower’s daughter. As Prohibition hurts profits, since demand for grapes is low, Moran tries to help the vineyard owner. The effort entangles Moran with the Italian mob, the Chinese mob, and the Catholic Church mob. Dealing with the latter, Moran confronts something he—and the reader—suspected all along about Effie. More disillusioned than ever, a melancholy Moran heads back on the road.
As journey novels go, this one is pretty much a Cook’s tour of early-20th-century America.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32975-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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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