by Allen Drury ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1995
Drury (What Price Glory?, 1990, etc.) returns with a novel as didactic as a '60s Pravdaall about limp foreign policy and the wane of US status and influence at century's end. The kingdoms of Greater and Lesser LolÛm are your basic hellholes, both ruled by tribal despots. The Lesser has oil, and so naturally the Greater, ruled by Sidi bin Sidi bin Sidi, a leader with all the endearing qualities of Qaddafi, Hussein, and Idi Amin, has designs on it. Moreover, Sidi has been given atomic weapons by an unnamed troublemaker. A slippery, ironic US president, a patrician, honorable, secretary of state, a feisty (black) assistant secretary, plus a trio of practically pacifist talk-show hosts are the main characters, abetted by gelded military chiefs. News of Sidi's new toys reaches the State Department, and the president telephones Sidi to warn him against adventurism. Sidi is defiant, of course, and follows up by having a brave, young CIA agent killed and then delivered to the embassy in a bag. Meanwhile, the president dithers, the secretary calls for measured diplomacy, the assistant calls for a strong condemnation, the UN obfuscates, the Joint Chiefs quail, the media rail, and Sidi plays them all like a violin because American opinion polls are against foreign entanglements and no recent president has had the courage to do what's right rather than what's popular. Eventually, a resolution of conflicting eventsand potential eventswill be arrived at, of a kind that will be taken differently by different readers, while, at very end, a sinister tramp-ship carrying more than meets the eye will come into dock in New York harbor. The plot resonates with recent events in the Middle East and with America's loss of will and increased vulnerability to atomic blackmaila valid topic for a political novelbut Drury's cardboard characters and continuous bombast make for hard going.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80702-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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