Light, fey fiction from an author who’s clearly a man of the world as well as a man of letters. His reputation still rests...
It looks a lot like Pulitzer-winning humorist and proficient memoirist Buchwald (I'll Always Have Paris, 1996, etc.) has dipped into the depths of his filing cabinet to fish out this largely wan attempt at the art of fiction.
The tale is formed by alternating bits of commentary from protagonist Roger Folger (a name surely not the one the character was born with) and his deceased wife, Stella. The late Mrs. Folger, recently removed from Forest Hills, New York, relaxes by the pool at the celestial counterpart of Florida's Ritz-Carlton. She is in contact with her husband via some sort of supernal cell phone (and, given the progress of technology, such a thing seems as plausible as the rest of the fable). With a willful daughter (who becomes an unwed mother) and a soulful son (who rejected a bar mitzvah), the Folger family performs as if in a sitcom of sorts. Dead Stella and live Roger both have comical sidekicks. To add to the typical high jinks, there's Stella's mother-in-law, who arrives in Heaven and raises Hell. (The radical mother-in-law, mention of Timothy Leary, and references to young Folger's service in Vietnam give the text a certain musty quality.) The story: Stella tries to provide a new spouse for her husband. He’ll make an independent choice, however—one that will come as no surprise to anyone. Of course, Buchwald, who has conquered nearly every form of writing (save, perhaps, computer software and SAT questions), sports a clever intelligence. His attempt at fiction does, perforce, contain flashes of wisdom and a natural patina of humor. But in the subcategory of dead spousal influence, he's not quite up to Noël Coward or even Thorne Smith.
Light, fey fiction from an author who’s clearly a man of the world as well as a man of letters. His reputation still rests on his political commentary, his well-crafted memoirs, and all those funny columns.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-14642-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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
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