An ambitious first novel by literary scholar Herron that sets out to create, in established epic form, a mythic exploration of traditional institutions and racial identity in America. Divided into 24 books, the story alternates between passages of incantatory prose and the more realistic account of the Snowdon family, whose tragic legacy is meant to parallel that of other great mythic families. The Washington, D.C., Snowdon family is affluent and black; father John Christian is a noted heart surgeon; wife Camille, beautiful but passive, tends her roses; and the three daughters—Cynthia Jane, Patricia, and Eva—lead privileged lives of expensive schools and travel. But a family chosen for an epic role must suffer some monstrous flaw or tragedy, and the Snowdons, sensitive and gifted as they all are, certainly do. Father John Christian and daughter Patricia love each other too much, and their daughter, Johnnie, is born. Sister Eva, also incestuous in her own innocent way, is raped and goes temporarily mad; and deeply religious Cynthia Jane flees her family to become a nun. Meanwhile, Johnnie, mute for the first 14 years of her life, lives secretly with her mother in Georgetown. But when Patricia, overwhelmed by her bleak visions, drowns herself in the Potomac, Johnnie sets off on a mini-odyssey to find out the truth about granddad/daddy, the two aunts, and grandmother Camille, who watched it all happen. And because this is more than a story about a troubled family, an apocalypse is hinted at, the past is revisited, and Johnnie is ``condemned to immortality'' as a light haunting a destroyed Washington. Vividly written and bold in concept, but the thematic intentions here are too strained and the story not quite up to it. Herron has tried to do too much.
Pub Date: April 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-57644-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
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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