This debut by a Michigan educational assessor is very much a book, not a collection of individual poems, all about the turn- of-century murderer known as Jack the Ripper. It’s also easy to see why Richard Howard, who, as the series editor, provides an introduction, was attracted to Buchanan’s elaborate construction: the bulk of the poems are dramatic monologues, a form best practiced in our time by Howard himself. The first sections of this grim volume are the weakest: Jack addresses a number of the women he murdered, providing the sick rationale for his acts. In one case, he fancies himself a poet inspired by Poe, in another an avenging angel. Each victim responds in kind: one sees her parents in Jack’s evil face, another speaks from the afterlife of vengeful witchcraft, and, best of all, one dispels his Poe pretensions. Buchanan’s voices in this early section seldom vary, and Jack sounds more like Jack Nicholson in The Shining than any fin de siäcle rogue. Buchanan interrupts his book with a prose section, “Ripperology,” that rehearses the evidence for the main real-life suspects in the case. After this, his verse truly takes off: each Jack, in language suitable to his background, explains his reasons for murder: the butcher confesses his grotesque love of necrophilia, cannibalism, and sex with meat; a priest describes sacramental killing as God’s will; and the failed poet (a real-life tutor to the Queen’s grandson) relies on bad ballads and rhymes to justify his actions. The two most plausible suspects, the Queen’s physician and her grandson, the Duke of Clarence, are motivated by drug-addiction and syphilitic madness. The woman-hating language of the speakers and the gruesome details of their actions are not for the faint of heart. But Buchanan has achieved something clever and powerful here: he’s revealed the mysteries of identity at the heart of a Victorian murder mystery.
Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57003-297-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Univ. of South Carolina
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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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