Another gathering of elliptical vignettes and ponderous philosophizing from the ostensibly controversial German author (Devotion, 1979; The Young Man, not reviewed). In truth, the only controversy engendered by Strauss's bewildering concoctions is whether they might have any meaning for sensibilities other than the one that assembled them. Here, we're treated to six interchangeable patchwork stories, each a seemingly arbitrary collection of discrete scenes and statements meant to express our common solipsism and essential selfishness. Thus, in ``traffic flow,'' a man watches as his girlfriend is hit by a car, then realizes his feelings for her have been altered by the event, triggering a sequence of otherwise unrelated minutiae that variously demonstrate lovers' (and others') lack of constancy; ``by ourselves'' dramatizes (sort of) ``the profound indifference people have for one another,'' and ``idiots of the immediate'' seems concerned with the different forms anxiety takes in human relationships. Only in ``couples,'' the longest story, is there a consistent, if discursive, focus on various manifestations of ``the two-person unit in which we isolate ourselves with that one other person: mother, father, lover, child.'' And only in ``dimmer'' is there an engagingly specific fictional invention: a revisionist creation myth according to which men and women originally did not cohabit but instead gave birth separately, to his or her replacement, as it were, at the moment of death. One wants more such invention and less of what Strauss, in a passing theoretical fit, defines as ``an art which denies itself the delights of perfect normality, and. . . turns to the intricate demands of the symbolic. . . running the danger that what is created might only celebrate the idea.'' Well, he should know. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker: I'd sooner clean and paint the house Than read a book by Botho Strauss.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8101-1242-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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