An engaging read that vividly, and often painfully, portrays humanity’s struggle with inhumanity.
A young Jewish man comes of age, searches for his identity and crosses the Atlantic at the turn of the last century.
Avrum Vishinsky was a child when his village was burned and all its inhabitants killed during a pogrom in 1898. Only he and his little brother, Hershel, survived. Within a day of this first tragedy, however, they suffer a second, as they are separated, each fearing the other dead. The story follows Avrum as he falls in with a group of rough lumbermen, one of whom takes the young boy under his wing. Avrum grows up and eventually leaves the forests to search for his brother in the Ukrainian city of Lvov. It is here that he has his first encounter since the pogrom with his Jewish heritage, and also learns that Hershel is alive and in America. After more time spent growing up, working hard and traveling with seedy characters, Avrum himself sets sail for America. Almost by chance, he takes a ship for Canada and ends up in Montreal, where he finds work and housing with fellow Jews, though he remains only ambiguously Jewish. Avrum becomes a professional wrestler, but he is also a spiritual and emotional wrestler throughout the book. He suffers deeply from having no sense of belonging or identity. His nightmares and loneliness haunt him, even as he attempts to live morally in the midst of immorality. Holtzman creates a believably troubled protagonist, caught in the web of his own destiny, as defined by a kabbalist seer. Avrum represents the goodness in humanity, struggling with tragedy, evil and temptation. Yet in the end, subtly, justice has its day.
An engaging read that vividly, and often painfully, portrays humanity’s struggle with inhumanity.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7414-4028-0
Page Count: 378
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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