An often engaging portrait of damage and healing that will be invaluable to sufferers of PTSD and those who love them.
A novel that addresses the nature and effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.
DeLevie’s intelligent, cumulatively powerful debut novel involves eight men in a room, all veterans of the Israeli armed forces. They’re all suffering from some permutation of PTSD, and each is coming to group therapy in a desperate attempt to regain control of his life. Overseeing and facilitating the meeting is 71-year-old Zev, a warm, caring psychologist. He takes his task very seriously, drawing out these men’s psychological poisons. The men are from a variety of fairly normal backgrounds, and their lives have all come to a shattering full-stop due to the horrors of war. As they begin to tell their stories, it becomes clear that although the traumas are different for each of them (“For me, it’s not the sight of blood or hearing the screams of the wounded; for me it’s the helicopters and the booms of artillery”), the chilling, alarming effects are very similar. They can’t bring themselves to care about or participate in the world, they sleep too much and they lash out at people who are trying to help. As with most cause-oriented novels (such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle), this book’s fictional elements are fairly thin. As the author states in his introduction, his characters are amalgams of many real soldiers he’s interviewed over the years. As a result, the book’s plentiful exposition is much more informative than dramatic. However, Zev, clearly a stand-in for the author, is a patient listener and a persistent prodder; he knows that “emotional injuries are every bit as valid as physical injuries,” and he’s keenly aware of how deep the roots of such injuries can go (“One guy tells a story about somebody’s grandfather who fought in Sinai more than 50 years ago and is still struggling with the symptoms”).
An often engaging portrait of damage and healing that will be invaluable to sufferers of PTSD and those who love them.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492820307
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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