A sweet, nostalgic first novel by essayist Cooper (Maps to Anywhere, 1991) delineating the riddles that define Burt Zerkin's 11th year—as Burt discovers his sexual longing for boys and men and faces the death of an older brother from leukemia. The time is 1962, the place suburban Los Angeles, where Burt lives in a big Spanish-style house with his wisecracking father, Ira, a manic divorce attorney who's been invited to play himself on the TV show Divorce Court; his pretty mother, Sylvie, serene in the glow of her husband's burgeoning success; his maiden Aunt Ida, who wears a turban, speaks Yiddish, waits tables in a local bar, and dotes on Burt; and 21-year-old brother Bob, Burt's baggy-suited idol, who works for their father as a stylish, snappy private eye. Except that Bob is hopelessly in love with an elusive, unresponsive, weirdly artistic but beautiful girl named Marion Hirsch, this is a happy family—everyone loves to watch Queen for a Day while mixing colorful cocktails in the newly refurbished rec room. Then one afternoon Burt discovers that he possess a wayward desire to kiss his best friend, Brad King, rather than smooch with Brad's father's secret collection of Playboy pinups; and before too many weeks go by he also—to his stunned horror—finds himself having fantasies about one Chief Altoon, a local fire marshall who's given a speech at Burt's school. Meanwhile, Bob begins visibly fading—at first, it appears, from unrequited love, but soon, it's clear, from a wasting disease that can't be cured. As Bob slowly dies, the family becomes sadder and more sober but stronger; they mark the passing days by reading from the book A Year of Rhymes for Young Adults; and because Burt has learned to ``Remember through Rhymes'' from a book on memory aids, he won't forget his brother. Beautifully written and memorable—if not as riveting or powerful as one might hope.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-670-84732-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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
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