Probing men's insecurities with a vengeance, a debut collection of nine stories from Shulman gives a tightly focused but often repetitive view of macho misfiring and emotional turbulence. The title story displays most of the themes here: A young man is taken by his girlfriend to her family's house in Montauk for the weekend, where he first clashes with her domineering father, then reaches an understanding with him, and, after a night spat leaves him naked on the beach while his lover does laps in the ocean, is menaced by a pair of muscle men who disparage his manhood before going away, leaving hime to have frenzied sex in the sand. Father- son conflict, performance issues, and the thrill of the great outdoors add further heat elsewhere. In ``Ghosts,'' a boy sees his overbearing father badger the first-rate mechanic in Dad's filling station into quitting; years later, by this time a drop-out and potential draftee suffering the same sort of abuse, he takes off from home with Dad's one treasure, the classic '50s Buick in which he was conceived. ``Seduction'' follows a pair of husbands as they spend a weekend camping in the Adirondacks, where they become transformed from close friends into lovers, a transition that one of them is to unable to accept. In ``The Deer,'' a youth and his jobless father go hunting the morning after the boy has watched Dad abuse Mom; he first hides from his father in the woods, then refuses to help carry Dad's deer home. When they finally reach home, Mom rejects it as a peace offering; Dad buries it in the front yard. Severely limited in range, but these tales of bleak, misshapen lives do offer a unified worldview—one more than a little familiar to anyone growing up male in America.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1996
ISBN: 1-887369-03-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996
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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