Not a great addition to the canon of baseball literature, but not a swing and a miss either.
An obsessive parent demonstrates his love for his son with an unusual experiment.
Lombardo (How to Hold a Woman, 2009, etc.) follows the career of ball-playing wunderkind Danny Granville, the child of high-school teacher Henry and desolate Lori. After discovering that his young son can pitch with either hand, Henry begins training the boy to be the world’s greatest “switch pitcher” by forcing him to operate equally well with either arm. “Maybe there was a window for ambidexterity,” Henry muses. “There were windows for everything! There were windows for creativity and personality and athleticism and musical talent and compassion and altruism, and even genius!” Outside the home, Danny keeps the secret of his immense talent until he loses a high-school game—punching himself afterwards in frustration, to his mother’s horror—and decides to unleash his two-armed barrage on the opposing team in the following match. After a brief stint at college, Danny is drafted in the third round by the Chicago Cubs and before long is striking out the best hitters in the business at Wrigley Field. Exploring with acuity the psychologies of both father and son, the narrative works best when it sticks to the venerable literary traditions of the baseball novel. Regrettably, the author insists on artificially ratcheting up the tension with a reporter who writes an overblown exposé of Henry’s obsession and a subpar subplot implying that Danny’s talent for pitching has unlocked some kind of preternatural ability to foresee disaster. While definitely worthwhile, the book ultimately reflects Danny’s personal mantra: “There’s no such thing as a perfect game.”
Not a great addition to the canon of baseball literature, but not a swing and a miss either.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59020-307-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
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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