Poverman's fifth book (My Father in Dreams, 1989, etc.) and second collection of stories (The Black Velvet Girl, an Iowa Award- winner in 1976) is a dazzler: Wide-ranging—from sexual abuse to psychosis, Vietnam nightmares, and the inner lives of drag queens- -Poverman consistently holds anguished lives up to the light and unsentimentally offers the possibility of redemption. The title story, close to novella length, takes a familiar subject that's been done almost to death—a young woman becomes involved with, and then frightened by, a self-described Vietnam vet who is violently self-destructive—and makes the familiar not only fresh but scary. The vet turns out not to be a vet at all, and the narrator's addiction to him (``he was like a drug and I couldn't get enough'') turns clichÇ on its face and manages to tell a dark Conradian story about a woman who comes to see a side of herself she would prefer not to know. Likewise, ``The Man Who Died'' begins as a psychological mystery about a professor accused of sexual abuse, then deepens as the professor begins to doubt his own version of events. A pre-sentence hearing turns into a personal psychoanalysis in which a man who's always thought of himself as a ``healer'' must confront impulses and dark visions. In ``Beautiful,'' Poverman turns what appears at first to be a glitzy story about a glamour girl into a haunting exploration of identity when the girl helps out a friend by demonstrating cosmetics and discovers how vulnerable women are, how willing to be changed. At its best, and that's often, a powerful group of stories: one of the finest collections since Christopher Tilghman's In a Father's Place.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-86538-076-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Ontario Review
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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