A very dated fictional hagiography of the Kennedy era, written by novelist and journalist Rivers (Indecent Behavior, 1990; Slick Spins and Fractured Facts, 1996, etc.) in a tone so reverent that it could turn Arthur Schlesinger’s stomach. If you still believe that JFK represented the last best hope for American politics and society, this is the book for you. It describes—through allegorical characters worthy of an Eisenstein film—the coming together of people, forces, and ideas that resulted in the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and the assassination in Dallas. The story begins in 1963 with girl reporter Mary Springer’s introduction to big-league journalism at a White House press conference. Mary works for the Belvedere Blade in backwoods Maryland. Ordinarily, she’d be covering Rotary conventions and supermarket dedications, but on her first trip to the White House she manages to get a question answered by the President and goes on to become his confidante in a small way. An urban renewal project in Belvedere has become the object of black protests, you see, and Kennedy needs someone to tell him the truth about what’s happening. Springer and her photographer sidekick Jay Broderick cover the protests, which brings them into contact with Donald Johnson, a black creative-writing student at Georgetown who serves as one of the protest organizers. Johnson, highly educated and urbane, knows he can pass in white society but doesn’t feel comfortable putting his roots behind him. Springer (unhappily married as the result of a shotgun wedding) and Broderick (unhappily alcoholic) begin an unhappy affair that ends in tragedy. Johnson becomes more and more militant in his demand for justice—with tragic results. And JFK himself, whose interior monologues are interpolated throughout the story, comes to a tragic end in Dallas, in case you didn’t know. Sophomoric and hackneyed: a formulaic plot inhabited by formulaic characters.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-944072-96-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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