by Charles Birmingham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2018
A marvelously creative but tediously labyrinthine story.
An ex-athlete gets a chance to alter the course of history and find his missing wife in this supernaturally charged time-travel adventure.
American Charley Montgomery, a former professional football player, moves to Normandy, France, with his wife, Jane. Soon afterward, she goes missing, and all that Charley can find of her is a bloody sneaker. Despite his efforts to locate her, local police seem convinced that he killed her, although they don’t have enough evidence to arrest him. Then, one day, Charley is awakened by the sound of unannounced visitors in his home: Richard “Bobby” Percival and Babe Caffo, both dressed like soldiers from the 1940s. They claim to be Jedburghs, part of an elite team of soldiers that infiltrated France in advance of the colossal D-Day invasion of Allied troops during World War II. The two men, it turns out, are capable of traveling through time, using alchemical innovations of the ancient scientist Hermes Trismegistus. They’re on the trail of a man named Fulcanelli, a mysteriously ageless figure recruited by the Nazis who knows a secret way to unleash destructive atomic energy. However, Fulcanelli can’t harness this power on his own—he needs the help of a supernaturally powerful little girl, whom he kidnapped. That little girl is Jane, who will grow up to be Charley’s wife. Debut author Birmingham ingeniously follows his protagonist’s efforts to track Jane down—not only to save her, but also to rescue Europe from Nazi domination. The story is consistently inventive, and the author movingly describes Charley’s bizarre predicament as a combination of ecstasy and torment: “And as much as I wanted to believe that and hold onto her, she would be taken away from me. Sartre could not have created a more awful hell than to be taunted by an unseen force in this way.” However, the plot quickly becomes exasperatingly confusing and convoluted, and despite the author’s evocative prose, the last quarter of the novel ends up feeling like a dutiful chore.
A marvelously creative but tediously labyrinthine story.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-16520-1
Page Count: 422
Publisher: The Cider Circle Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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