The final days of apartheid are the setting for the salvation of Leon, a determinedly nonheroic South African exile, in this ambitious third novel (Middlepost, 1989, etc.) from South African- born actor and writer Sher, now living in London. When the Soweto riots break out in 1976, Leon Lipschitz, heir to a shipping fortune, is in Britain on holiday. Gay and Jewish, Leon lives a life of dissolute luxury on generous allowances from his family. He drinks heavily, takes drugs, and has numerous sexual encounters, but an accidental meeting with anti-apartheid protester Angela, a British teacher, convinces him that he should leave South Africa—``The writing was on the wall back in S.A. and the writing said AMANDLA...black power, since I didn't fancy getting butchered in my bed, I slipped on my running shoes.'' In the early 80's, aware of the three A's at his heels—Apartheid, Anti-Semitism, and AIDS—Leon marries Angela as another form of escape, but increasingly he finds he can neither escape South Africa nor his homosexuality. A trip back is planned, but before the two leave, Leon meets the mysterious and handsome young Afrikaner Gertjie, who claims to have fled South Africa for political reasons. Back in South Africa, Leon finds his family and the country in the throes of painful change. Forced at last to assume some responsibility for others, Leon tries to help his aging father, whose associates are abandoning him. And in a mad drive across country in the family Rolls-Royce, Leon learns the truth about Gertjie and, for the first time, finds himself fighting rather than running away. Despite the politics, sex, drugs, and booze: an old-fashioned story of redemption, with a reluctant hero and a slew of credible characters. Slow to start but ultimately gripping.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84456-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
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