A refreshingly straightforward, stirring and unusual adventure.
A young man stumbles his way to enlightenment in the wilds of the Australian outback.
Pilkington brings an active imagination and deft storytelling prowess to the story of Rex Rivington, an Australian bloke whose life is forever changed by the titular Four of Diamonds. This captivating epic features adventures both fantastic (the harsh rough-and-tumble existence of a young jackaroo) and mundane (the touching, life-long love affair between Rex and his steadfast wife, Athele). Rex, a young cowpoke from a blue-collar background, struggles to make his way through Australia in the early 1920s. Leaving his family’s homestead, the boy travels to New South Wales, where he earns his keep herding sheep in the desolate western range. Rex also gains new skills, among them the manly arts of shooting, bare-knuckle fighting and footballing. But as a result of a pair of savage accidents, he discovers a gift not for destruction but for healing. Rex enrolls in medical school but struggles to find the support necessary to finish his degree. His luck turns when he pulls a four of diamonds to fill a straight flush during a late-night poker game. Rex’s escapades parallel those of his brother Bruce, an itinerant journalist who sends home stories of Africa and Asia before being tapped as a war correspondent in the Pacific during World War II, a period that causes Rex the most grief as he loses the family members most dear to him. The author’s immensely likeable protagonist is a beloved and civilized man in a remarkably uncivil world, and this account of Rex’s uncommon life is elevated by marvelous yet familiar prose, reminiscent of the dry toughness of Louis L’Amour: “These things come along and test our very souls…And we just have to somewhere find the strength to take them on our chins, and move on.”
A refreshingly straightforward, stirring and unusual adventure.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-595-39904-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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