A very short (85-page) hybrid of a novel—essentially a lightly fictionalized investigation of real people and real events—by Italian author and critic Magris (the nonfiction Danube, 1989). A retired priest, in a long letter to a fellow priest, gives his account and interpretation of one of the minor but tragic sideshows of WW II. In 1944, the Nazis cynically promised Cossack refugees from the Soviet Union their own homeland in a region around Carnia in northern Italy. In return, this mixed group of men from the Caucasus, along with White Russians led by General Krasnov, a White Army hero in the Russian civil war, helped the Germans subdue the local peasants. After Germany's defeat, the warriors were handed over by the British to the Soviets. Many committed suicide with their families rather than endure Soviet justice. Though many believed that General Krasnov had been executed by the Soviets, the priest who had been working in Carnia in 1944 thought he might have been killed by his own men near the end, perhaps for some buried treasure or to save him from the humiliation of a public execution. Using the hilt of a sabre found in an exhumed Cossack war grave as if it were a key to a map, the priest examines the paradoxes of this man—so decent in many ways, brave and courageous, yet willing to make a pact with the devil. He decides, finally, that ``this unconscious desire for Krasnov's redemption persuades me to believe that this man who believed in adventure, was capable of admitting, in extremis, that his own adventure had been mistaken and that the true, hazardous adventure lay in acknowledging the impossibility of his absurd egocentric dreams.'' Magris raises and often answers many big questions, but the ideas tend to overshadow the people involved. General Krasnov remains as incomplete as the sabre from which all these inferences are drawn.
Pub Date: May 18, 1991
ISBN: 0-8076-1265-0
Page Count: 85
Publisher: Braziller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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