A lucid and careful collection whose charm lies in the modesty of its claims.
Early on in this collection of short fiction and poetry, Wachtel sounds the keynote for what will follow: "What thing is too specific / to sing about or, simply / to recall." It is a Whitmanesque formulation, promising encomiums of the ordinary, life studies in miniature, raptures for the ant and the bee. But for Wachtel the interrogative is genuine: he doesn't intend to celebrate the simple and the small so much as to probe them for layers of feeling and significance. Three of his pieces involve people playing the lottery, a game in which ordinary people often win extraordinary amounts of money. Sudden wealth, in Wachtel's scenarios, ultimately brings its possessors no change at all, or at most small changes and ambiguous revelations. Wachtel's point here seems to be that the everyday has a certain recalcitrance, that it is often not a metaphysical condition but merely a habit. Another view on the ordinary is offered in a humorous series of three poems, the last two ostensibly serving as footnotes to the first. Sometimes, however, Wachtel seems to choose details that are genuinely superfluous, an art (or fault) one is more likely to praise (or forgive) in a novelist than a poet. There are several places where Wachtel nods, and the reader will too. But, just as often, the writing is meticulous and bemusedly scientific. In these texts, odd fragments of American culture—television programming, college football rallies—provoke bewilderment and a feeling of alienation in one's native place. Wachtel's contestable but hard-won belief is that explanations for our questions come from looking harder, so that even a "single blossom" might "speak the full name of our true environment if we simply held it in our direct gaze."
A lucid and careful collection whose charm lies in the modesty of its claims.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-882413-75-X
Page Count: 103
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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