Contains elements of a compelling story but seen through a dull lens.
Ginsberg’s novel depicts the rise and fall of small-town quarterback phenom Joe Sachuck.
Sachuck’s athletic life starts on the kind of quasi-mythical story arc football fans love. He’s said to have a certain spark early on, though Ginsberg resists the temptation to make him an instant hit wherever he goes, from high school to the pros. Instead, there’s respect for the work and personal sacrifices he undertakes as a driven athlete whose only goal is making it to the pinnacle of his profession. Family problems pop up, too, including a convincingly complicated story about his father who alienated the whole family while providing the toughness and dedication necessary for his son to succeed. There are even some solid parallels between Sachuck and Gary Campbell, a loner who sets in motion the trouble that eventually overtakes Sachuck. All the plot points and characters are there, but readers don’t get to see them firsthand. Instead, Ginsberg presents them through the device of a first-person narrator gathering the facts from newspapers, through wooden dialogue, from the Sachuck family and even his own cousin telling the story, giving it the stiff quality of a secondhand story told by someone who may or may not have all of the information. The format also paints the narrator, Fred, as a kind of silent observer who doesn’t seem to serve any real function in the story he’s telling. Characters will sometimes address him by name in dialogue, further removing the audience from actual events. Later on, the story of Campbell’s fall from grace on Wall Street begins and ends in a chapter fewer than two pages long. When Sachuck is drafted by a pro team and goes through grueling training to make the team, readers don’t see Joe slave over his playbook or take a hit on the field; instead, that information is passed on through a conversation with his brother, Tommy. The narrator often quotes a character without giving any kind of setting, making the information feel even more detached.
Contains elements of a compelling story but seen through a dull lens.Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484065624
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2013
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
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