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COME TO ME

SHORT STORIES

A practicing psychotherapist's splendid, sometimes shocking first collection of stories, some of which have been selected by The Best American Short Stories (1991 and 1992) and cited by the National Magazine Awards. Each of these 14 family-centric pieces involves trespass. In the elegant, disturbing opening story, ``Love Is Not a Pie,'' the narrator breaks off her wedding engagement after realizing, during her mother's funeral, that a family friend named Mr. DeCuervo has for many years carried on an affair not just with her mother, as she and her sister had reluctantly concluded, but also with their big, gruff, Irish father, with whom DeCuervo tearily goes off to nap after the mother's burial. In ``Sleepwalking,'' a bereaved wife lets her beloved 19-year-old stepson, who calls her ``Mom,'' seduce her. In ``Hyacinths,'' six-year-old David accidentally shoots and kills his young cousin in his widowed father's barn; then his father attempts to shoot him in retribution but is stopped by his aunt and uncle, who adopt the boy. This same boy turns out when grown to be David, the husband of Galen, protagonist or peripheral character in many of the later stories gathered here: for example, in one about Galen's adulterous suburban fling with handsome neighbor Henry DiMartino; in another about Henry's conventional wife's subsequent weird and touching love affair with a transvestite hairdresser; and, most notably and powerfully, in the prize-winning ``Silver Water,'' about the mercy killing of one of Galen's daughters—a hopeless schizophrenic named Rose—by the other, kind and clearheaded Violet, who finds Rose lying on the family lawn late one night, overdosing on sleeping pills, and sits beside her while she dies. There's much more, and all of it is well worth a reader's time. Bloom is an acute, poker-faced observer and a gifted writer.

Pub Date: June 2, 1993

ISBN: 0-06-018236-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993

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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

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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

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