An illuminating, if sometimes-painful, dissection of a relationship.
Eckel’s debut novel offers a 63-year-old man’s remembrance of a high school relationship, told with the wisdom of experience.
After 35 years away, Coop Berkoff returns to his hometown of Spartans Ridge, Georgia, for a high school reunion. The reunion involves multiple past classes, so it’s emotionally fraught for Coop, as he’ll be seeing his lost love, Cynthia Weaver, for the first time in decades. He was once a precocious and joyful young man, but when he met Cynthia in his senior year, his life took a turn. She was slightly younger than he was, and she immediately captivated him; he professed his feelings at the Moon-Glo drive-in theater—a decision that changed his life. Despite their strong feelings for each other, jealousy and uncertainty plagued their relationship. Cynthia needed to be reassured of Coop’s—or any man’s—goodness, and, later, Coop found himself desperately wanting her approval. When he went off to college, the combination of distance and jealousy became poisonous, and Coop became misanthropic and even violent toward others as he struggled with his own depression and malaise. The characters’ turbulent history offers not only a story of romance but, eventually, one of understanding, acceptance, and moving on. Readers may find that the tone of the prose seems detached at times, but this distance is actually one of the novel’s greatest strengths. The emotions of the characters run high throughout the story, but it’s told from a point of view of recollection decades later, and the nigh-clinical precision with which the author describes events allows readers to have greater sympathy and understanding than closer narration might have achieved. The result is a complex, character-driven study dealing with depression, love, and the stubborn refusal to give up the fight.
An illuminating, if sometimes-painful, dissection of a relationship.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9995293-3-1
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Beckel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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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