Newcomer Renino offers a remarkably affecting debut about a young man's coming of age in postWW II Brooklyn. It's 1947, and 19-year-old Vince Stigiano (who was too young for the war that claimed the lives of so many schoolmates) is working as a batboy with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The sole support of a widowed mother who's recovering from TB, Vince takes in stride the conferred glamour of a dream job with the community's beloved Bums. Quiet Vince also understands that the often bitter realities of his own life are not so different from the difficulties experienced by a ballclub simultaneously trying to assimilate Jackie Robinson (the first African-American to play in the majors) and win the National League pennant. As the home team begins winning consistently, Sam LaVista, Vince's closest friend, makes a delayed return from the Army Air Corps, having served as a fighter pilot. While Vince attempts to help Sam readjust to civilian life, he becomes romantically involved with Sam's younger sister Alma. But traumatized by the combat deaths of fellow fliers, the onetime golden boy refuses Vince's help. Then Alma decides to attend the University of Cincinnati (where Vince can see her only on road trips). Finally cured after a midsummer stay at Saranac Lake, moreover, Vince's mother is considering remarriage. On the plus side of his ledger, the Dodgers finish an exciting season on top of the standings and play the Yankees for the world championship. At the close, Vince refuses an offer to return to the Dodgers in 1948 and prepares to make a life for himself, perhaps with Alma. An engaging, sure-handed first novel that uses baseball and an outer-borough milieu to excellent advantage in evoking a seemingly simpler time, when youth's losses were as painful as ever but its griefs more privately held.
Pub Date: May 31, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15686-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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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