by Andrew Eustace Anselmi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2015
A novel with laudable ambitions that doesn’t generate enough real drama to galvanize its torpid narrative.
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In Anselmi’s debut novel, a self-made man is accused of murdering his business partner and wife.
Guy Bennett, the son of Italian immigrants, is living the American dream. He oversees a real estate empire, has his own skyscraper in Manhattan, and his son, Albert, is a newly elected U.S. senator. But as he fights off a hostile takeover, he’s accused of killing his business partner, Vito Petrozzini, and his wife, Lena. As a result, his world comes crashing down around him. It turns out that he’s being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Straid, who’s out for revenge for losing his own senatorial bid. Guy’s younger son, Edward, defends him even though he despises Guy for refusing to acknowledge his pregnant Japanese lover, Nancy. Edward comes to believe that his father is being framed, and his search for the truth takes him into the past of his grandfather Dante Di Benedetto. In addition to being a murder mystery, courtroom drama and business thriller, this is also a story about the immigrant experience in America. In a lengthy flashback, readers follow Dante and his best friend, Adamo Petrozzini, father of Vito, as they make the journey from Italy to America and put down new roots in Jersey City, New Jersey. For his debut, Anselmi has written an ambitious and downright old-fashioned novel. Its narrative covers a lot of ground, from 1920 Italy to near-present-day New York City. However, there’s a stolid quality to the writing that may prevent some readers from fully engaging with the material. The characters lack the necessary shading to convince readers that they’re worthy of sympathy. Although this book’s depiction of immigrant life, big business and senatorial politics fuses together many different genres, it does so in a way that’s imitative, not immersive.
A novel with laudable ambitions that doesn’t generate enough real drama to galvanize its torpid narrative.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62901-120-2
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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