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SELF-PORTRAIT WITH WOMAN

A meditative, harshly lyrical, frequently funny—and unfortunately talky—character study by the acclaimed Polish author of The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman (1990) and A Mass for Arras (1993). Kamil is an aging Polish intellectual whose flickering love life provides his only stay against confusion in an adversary culture in which he feels himself becoming more and more a nonperson. When he's invited to be interviewed as part of an oral history project documenting the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe as experienced by selected ordinary citizens, he travels to Geneva, where he's met by his guide, a handsome middle-aged married woman whom he immediately prepares to seduce. As their ``interview'' proceeds, Kamil tells her the story of his life in terms of his relationships—innocent and exploitative, romantic and bluntly carnal—with ``women [who] didn't save themselves for the future, because no one believe[d] in any kind of future.'' The wider context is only thinly sketched in, and we're frustrated by teasing glimpses of the life Kamil has left behind in Warsaw. More effective variation is provided by his fantasized conversations with a prickly soulmate mischievously identified as ``Schubert'' and by a hallucinatory description of his wartime experiences- -disturbingly sexual—in a German prison camp. Szczypiorski's antihero is the sort of lover who, involved with an accomplished and dedicated woman doctor, finds that the life she lives beyond him erodes his need for her. For all that, Kamil's funereal humor in observing his own rapacious nature makes him oddly likable—and it's hard to dismiss outright a cynic who speculates that God must be Polish because He means well but seems to botch everything He creates. An urbane and bleakly amusing romp, if something less than a fully successful novel.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-8021-1567-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995

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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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