While delivering an intriguing premise, this sci-fi tale ends too soon.
In this novella, a surgeon finds himself jumping forward in time, with each interval growing longer.
Dennis Tanner, 40, has a good life: he’s a respected general surgeon; he loves his beautiful wife, Rachel, an architect; he has friends and a comfortable Manhattan apartment. But then he begins losing time. At first just a few hours have mysteriously passed. A tox screen and other tests show nothing is wrong with him, but then seven hours go by without his knowledge, and then two years. Dennis barely has time to address his wife’s astonishment at his reappearance before he’s again propelled forward to 2062, with Rachel now an old woman. Each jump takes him further and further forward in time, centuries ahead, to a world where he’s homeless and lost. In 2300, he meets Leah, a friendly woman who has a drink with him. He tells her the truth, which she’s skeptical about, but she asks him interesting questions about 2017. As he answers, he realizes how much he wants to stop and “be anchored in this time, at this moment. Never seeing more than a fleeting glimpse of a world was like being able to watch only movie trailers and never the movie….He could learn to live in 2300. He could adapt.” But it will be 2418 before Dennis learns how and why he’s been pushed forward in time. Adler (Tell Me a Fairytale, 2016, etc.) writes a compelling sci-fi narrative, with the reader as eager as Dennis to figure out what’s happening. In just a few pages, the author stirs a lot of what-if speculation about the future and what it would be like to suddenly travel there, increasingly bewildered by changes in technology and living arrangements. The language, however, stays pretty much the same: surely 400 years would make as much difference to future English as it has in the past. In addition, while the explanations for Dennis’ predicament and how it was brought about make sufficient sense, the novella concludes with these revelations, seemingly on the brink of the real story.
While delivering an intriguing premise, this sci-fi tale ends too soon.Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945259-05-0
Page Count: 62
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2017
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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