What might be—and occasionally is—touching is undercut by McAdam's indulgences in a clankingly poetic style.
Canadian novelist McAdam's third book (Fall, 2009, etc.) begins with Walt and Judy, a loving, childless Vermont couple beset by the feeling that they don't have sufficient outlets for the love they have to give.
One day in 1972, Walt comes across an article in Life about chimpanzees conversant in sign language, and soon he's gone off to a traveling circus in search of a cross-species surrogate son. Alongside the story of Walt and Judy and Looee, the baby chimp they acquire and adopt—from the beginning there is a presentiment of tragedy—McAdam places a parallel narrative set at a primate research institute in Florida, where, for decades, the intricate cultures of chimpanzees have been documented and their formidable linguistic and problem-solving abilities have been developed and celebrated. Here, too, the crux of the story has to do with loneliness and empathy; people (and nonpeople) are to be marveled at for their ability and willingness to offer fellow creatures the balms of love, compassion and friendship, and McAdam doesn't flinch from the workings of cruelty and brutality, either. There's daring, and some pleasure, in the switches of point of view and especially in McAdam's effort to come up with a subtle, sensitive way to inhabit the chimpanzees and approximate their version of English idiom. Alas, the book founders on McAdam's human idiom, which tends all too often toward abstraction and glib faux profundity: "Walt was in love, and held close the fact that there is nothing more natural or right than buying the world for the woman of your dreams. Try to name the value of that smile to Walt and his life-worn heart."
What might be—and occasionally is—touching is undercut by McAdam's indulgences in a clankingly poetic style.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61695-315-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
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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