Uncas acknowledges he is “a terribly small man.” And this is a terribly small first novel.
Old-fashioned professor rejoices in his marriage. Then he remembers seeing his wife kiss another man 30 years ago. Uh-oh.
Uncas Metcalfe is a 60-ish professor of botany at a college near his hometown, Sparta, in central New York; he’s a fifth generation Spartan. It’s the 1980s; the action, what there is of it, takes place between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Uncas’s wife Margaret, former owner of a nursery school, is in the hospital with a leg injury. Margaret has the people skills; the often oblivious Uncas is known by his family (there are grown kids and grandkids) as Lord Reticent Taciturn. But Uncas sees himself as a steady man who can recognize that quality in others, such as Alex, a young woman new in town; what he hasn’t noticed is that she’s a lesbian. Alex and her girlfriend Hannah have been helping out while Margaret, now back at home, convalesces. Uncas, unmoored since Margaret’s injury, finds himself telling Alex about a long-ago incident in Cambridge, Mass., when Uncas, unseen, observed his wife kissing an old childhood friend in their kitchen. True to form, he had never discussed the matter with Margaret; when he questions her now, she dismisses the kiss as inconsequential, which it clearly was. Realizing an old wound is not enough to sustain a novel, Osborne concocts something else, a confrontation between Uncas and a former student, Carl Benson, whom Uncas has forgotten but who has not forgotten him. Years before, Carl had asked the professor for help in overseeing marijuana therapy for his father, who was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease; Uncas ignored the request. Now Carl is provoking Uncas, stealing his bike and his briefcase. But why, Uncas wonders, has calling him to account “suddenly become imperative”? Good question, never answered.
Uncas acknowledges he is “a terribly small man.” And this is a terribly small first novel.Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-34277-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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
SEEN & HEARD
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