by Barbara Chepaitis ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003
Some lovely meditations on life, death, and the nighttime sky, but the leading ladies remain out of reach, leaving a...
A pallid exposé of family- and heart-affairs, from third-timer Chepaitis (These Dreams, 2002, etc.).
At 31, Delilah is a bit old to be living with her parents, but, since she has no clear plan, occupying the spare room in a Key West mansion isn’t so bad a way to waste a year or two. Her waitressing job isn’t fulfilling, and neither is boyfriend Thomas, a photographer sponging off her parents and living in their guest cottage. When her mother Lana, an eccentric activist, accidentally discovers the identity of her own birth mother, it’s decided that Delilah will go to upstate New York to see whether the old woman is amenable to meeting Lana. The trip would also allow Delilah to see best friend Monica, and, more importantly, ex-fiancé Michael. Grandmother Carla lives in a rambling old house that’s filled with circus folk from when she herself was a tiger tamer. Inexplicably, Delilah moves in the day she arrives, even though she and Carla have little interaction and even less conversation (Carla has a grouchy temperament), leaving barely a relationship between the two central characters. Instead, the story shifts to Delilah’s tangled love life: There’s Thomas back home in Key West, interested in Delilah only when he needs her to pose for his wacky photographs; there’s Michael, whose past relationship with Delilah was perfect until she found he was a serial cheater; and then there’s Jack. With an eye-patch and a muscled physique, Carla’s hunky neighbor is smart, funny, and also kind, considering all the home repairs he helps Carla with. Jack is the obvious choice for Delilah’s future happiness—especially when she discovers he’s really Carla’s doctor. But Delilah may still have eyes for Michael, who sort of promises he’s changed his ways.
Some lovely meditations on life, death, and the nighttime sky, but the leading ladies remain out of reach, leaving a predictable tale of true love and identity found.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-3752-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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