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THE GATES

Wachtel (Joe the Engineer, 1983) invigorates a story of vague angst with a cast of warm characters. Primo Thomas suffers from an unnamed problem. It is not serious enough to be called a depression but could more appropriately be termed spiritual malaise. He has just moved back to New York City after two years teaching at a small Massachusetts college. He is becoming more and more detached from his poet ex- wife, who has moved to California. He is the son of an African- American father and an Italian-American mother, both of whom are now dead. While there is no clear sense of his dilemma, he himself is real and casually present. It is rare in American fiction to find someone who has a social conscience without that being that person's defining characteristic, but Primo, a teacher of English as a Second Language, has a natural empathy with his students that's neither preachy nor overtly politicized. His friends and relatives are equally complete and decent. It's the 1980s, tensions between the US and the Sandinistas are high, and Primo and a friend go to Nicaragua as part of a delegation of teachers. He is touched by the situation there and has a brief affair with the delegation's guide, Angelita L¢pez. The trip does not resolve anything, but it does broaden his perspective. Upon his return, he becomes aware of the bad conditions at a factory employing one of his students (who has also become his lover) and takes a stab at unionizing the shop. Wachtel smoothly integrates coincidence and recurring themes and patterns, and it is remarkable that with so indirect a plot he manages to retain the reader's interest to the degree that he does. Still, the beginning and ending seem arbitrary since so little change takes place. A meandering slice of one nice guy's life. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-670-83886-1

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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