The Baltimore that Levinson evoked so warmly on film eludes him on paper.
High-school buddies move into the tough world of the late ’60s in a weakly plotted debut.
Director-screenwriter Levinson returns to Baltimore, the scene of three of his more successful efforts, Diner, Avalon, and Tin Men. As in those films, Levinson remains fascinated with life’s passages, but as a novelist, he fails to bring these moments to poignant life. The narrative shifts clumsily from Bobby Shine’s first-person story to third-person tales from Bobby’s pals. Bobby faces life after high school with some success: he becomes a promising TV director and begins a relationship with his girlfriend Annie. But Annie’s brother Neil reveals a self-destructive streak, letting himself be drafted, then going AWOL. Similarly, drug-dependent friend Ben curdles as his marriage collapses. High-school high jinks remain the order of the day at the local diner, where the guys, joined by immature pals Turko and Eggy, meet to spin tiresome tales of the past that seem like Diner leftovers. There are occasional flashes: when Ben stomps out of his father-in-law’s car dealership, refusing to work there, the moment has the feeling of a good take. But too often Levinson writes flat, even banal prose, as when Bobby observes, “Like tears, laughter often comes when you least expect it.” He never reaches any depth in exploring the changes the war in Vietnam brings to his characters’ world—passages about the conflict read like wedged-in exposition. And even though Levinson, through Bobby, makes the point that accidents shape destiny, the events pushing the narrative forward still seem forced, particularly a riot involving blacks in downtown Baltimore. The closing of the diner at the end recalls Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, still the benchmark for this sort of coming-of-age tale.
The Baltimore that Levinson evoked so warmly on film eludes him on paper.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-1533-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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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