Mining John Updike's territory of vaguely bitter, contemplative middle-age, but from a clear-eyed female perspective, Nietzke's (the nonfiction Natalie on the Street, 1994) first collection offers the last word on burnt-out baby boomdom in southern California. The women in Nietzke's tales confront common dilemmas with a surly disregard for their presumed timelessness: Husbands have split, lesbianism has replaced straight domesticity, menopause looms. In the title story, Lili develops attachments to laundry and gin while considering the absence of her male lover. When he returns, abjectly, it's difficult to know whether she feels elated or merely reassured. ``Los Angeles Here and Now'' hinges on the accidental delivery of a cremated young surfer's ashes to a woman who, after she takes the remains to her grieving neighbor, finds herself sexually enticed by the woman's cool suffering. ``No Man's Land'' is a novella in the form of an extended, Proustian meditation, with a tennis racket returned by protagonist Corinne's ex-husband sparking her recollections of that failed marriage. Her husband, Jack, was just free of one marriage and considerably older than Corinne when they got hitched; now Jack is on wife number three, and Corinne has fallen in love with a woman. In fact, Corinne and Jack shared just two passions: one for tennis, the other for Lela, a willowy temptress who lures everyone toward sexual reckonings. With tennis as her main conceit, Nietzke uses contrasting playing styles—Corinne's is stolid and dependable, the younger Lela's slashing and aggressive—both to structure the narrative and explore the ways in which women who came of age in the 1960s have changed. With her unwavering eye for the foibles of L.A. utopianism and her tremendous grasp of social mores, Nietzke has been compared with Joan Didion. This book, however, is less reportage than a quiet feast of unforgettable characters.
Pub Date: April 12, 1996
ISBN: 1-56947-052-9
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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