by Christoph Hein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1992
A chilling depiction of the Kafkaesque dimensions of life in Eastern Europe from prominent German playwright and novelist Hein, echoing the harsh social analysis of his earlier novel, The Distant Lover (1989). In the Prague Spring of 1968, Dallow is a young professor of 19th-century history just released from prison, having served a term of almost two years for playing a tango with lyrics deemed harmful to the state. Although he was recruited only as a temporary pianist for the student theater group responsible, Dallow shared their sentence, and now emerges into life only to find it distasteful and himself unable to function. His Institute in Leipzig no longer has a position for him, and his efforts to find work as a truckdriver are unrewarded. Dogged by government agents who promise to help if he'll play their game, and forced by the woman he's taken up with to come to terms with his hostility—which occasionally manifests itself in a loss of control over his hands and caused him to almost strangle the judge who presided over his trial—he seeks refuge as a waiter at a distant resort. Completely uninterested in developments in Prague, Dallow uses the fact that beds are scarce to accommodate a succession of young women, dallying until word arrives that his nemesis at the Institute has been politically incorrect in rejecting news reports of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and that Dallow has been tapped to replace him. At once a historical curiosity in its resurrection of a totalitarian regime recently put to rest and a damning assessment of the mind-set of those waiting to assume power. A timely, disturbing vision of social and moral collapse.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-27252-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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BOOK REVIEW
by Christoph Hein & translated by Philip Boehm
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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BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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