A likably rowdy first novel with a sudden (and not entirely credible) violent climactic turn, by a fine young Irish writer who’s also a successful standup comedian and film actor. O—Hanlon’s protagonist and primary narrator, 19-year-old Patrick Scully, relates in a vibrantly foulmouthed colloquial voice his adventures as a security guard for a Dublin jewelry store, weekend visits to his benighted hometown (Castlecock), and unstable romance with Francesca Kelly, a smashing wee girl who’s a Dublin college student majoring in —Media Studies.— Patrick can capably act the lout with his drinking pals (especially Xavier —Balls— O’Reilly, himself a college student and virtuoso perpetrator of anarchic mischief). Scully is the sort of innately intelligent hell-raiser (familiar to us recently from Roddy Doyle’s popular novels) who scorns to smoke or take drugs, cultivates a surprisingly conventional personal morality (—I don’t believe in sex outside marriage—) shortly before surrendering his virginity to —a mad bitch from Armagh— during a drunken spree, and evinces a rather touching devotion, not just to Francesca, but to his more than mildly deranged widowed mother and affectionate younger brother. Patrick’s story—which eventually focuses on a disastrous Halloween weekend when his various loves and friendships are crucially tested—is deftly juxtaposed both with fragmentary memories of his poignantly skewed childhood and with excerpts from Francesca’s diary, where she records her dreams of escaping her infuriating mother and oppressive environment—and where she reveals the real object of her affection (who isn—t Patrick, as he discovers when he surreptitiously reads the diary). The stark climax and denouement seem out of tune with its previous fractious and comic momentum, but there’s no denying that the story packs a powerful punch. A vivid debut, distinguished by hilarious dialogue, a sure sense of place and character, and a knowledge of their fateful interrelatedness. O—Hanlon is the real thing.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-6330-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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
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