Next book

TO KNOW A WOMAN

Peerless Israeli storyteller Oz presents 18 months in the life of painfully self-contained Yoel Raviv, retired from the Israeli Secret Service and trying to escape the ghosts of his professional life and his dead wife—a woman he's still struggling to know. Bedeviled by memories of his wife Ivria, accidentally electrocuted in his absence on business in Helsinki; of his servitude to agency contact Yirmiyahu Cordovero ("Le Patron"); and of an obsessively recurring series of frozen images—the statue of a cat mysteriously springing free of its base; the figure of Edgar Linton from Wuthering Heights; a wheelchair-bound beggar; a copy of Mrs. Dalloway left behind in Helsinki—Yoel reacts in two conflicting ways. Frantic to be left alone, he changes his name, retreats to a new house in a Tel Aviv suburb, and refuses a posting to Bangkok. At the same time, he reaches out equally frantically to his strong-willed, epileptic daughter Netta, about to be conscripted, and to his quarreling mother and mother-in-law, by asking them all to live with him; he also begins a robotic friendship with real-estate agent Arik Krantz and an equally passive love affair with next-door neighbor Annemarie Vermont, shepherded by her oppressively approving bother Ralph. Floating through this tangle of relationships, Yoel keeps telling himself that things will work out, that tomorrow is another day, but he's wrong—as he sees when his mother and Netta's lover Duby Krantz tell him off for his inability to accept people without controlling them, and when he's unable to get forgiven by the father of the agent killed in Bangkok in his place. Slowly, slowly, Oz thaws out his likable, paralyzed hero and returns him to provisional membership in the human race. A meditative third-person confessional of hauntingly quiet power—and a treasure for readers who think contemporary novels carry too much plot.

Pub Date: March 7, 1991

ISBN: 15-190499-5

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Categories:
Next book

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

Categories:
Next book

MAGIC HOUR

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

Categories:
Close Quickview