Maybe not a homer—it gets a bit preachy toward the end—but a ringing double off Fenway's Green Monster.
Savvier than The Natural, almost as sad as Bang the Drum Slowly, Tooke’s vastly entertaining debut is, like all good baseball novels, about more than just baseball.
Casey Fox loves hitting for distance and probably does it as well as anyone ever has, his hand-to-eye coordination exactly that extraordinary. “I see the ball. I hit the ball,” he explains when pressed. The truth is he adores every aspect of the game, from its intricacies to the stunning beauty of its best moments. What he can't abide are the parasites: exploitive owners, rapacious agents, and fat-cat marketers who make it so insistently about money, undermining the innocence and joy that are baseball's beguiling reasons for being. Reporter Russ Bryant is similarly alienated. Casey catches for Pawtucket, a minor league team of no distinction. Russ covers the club for the Providence Daily Journal, a newspaper he despises for its essential second-rateness. The two become friends, drawn to each other by loneliness, a leaning toward self-destruction, and a shared recognition that they could be better people than they are, though neither really knows what that entails. But Molly, an earth mother at 22, does know. She grew up in the same foster home that Casey did and has aspirations for him that have little to do with baseball and everything to do with a life well lived. When she meets Russ, Molly takes him under her wing too; instantly in love, he's glad to join Casey, who was there before him. Suddenly the Boston Red Sox need a catcher; Casey is called up and becomes an immediate sensation, propelling the floundering Sox into a blistering pennant race. While Tooke does the contest full justice, he cares about the triangle as much as the diamond.
Maybe not a homer—it gets a bit preachy toward the end—but a ringing double off Fenway's Green Monster.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50640-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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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