Distinguished editor, writer, and critic Knight's new novel (after A Reasonable World, 1993, etc.) opens in Milan, where Wellington ``Bill'' Stout—he ``travels in ladies' underwear''—is shot in the head while dining in a restaurant. He wakes, or thinks he does, in a hospital; the bullet, too dangerous to remove, still lodges in his skull, so he's being treated with hallucinogenic drugs. According to his dinner companion, Roger Wort, Bill was given a McGuffin by his brother, Tom, to pass to Roger, but in the confusion it went missing or perhaps was stolen from his hotel room—Bill doesn't remember. A new planet appears in the sky and is generally referred to as ``Mongo.'' A slick salesman from the Spaeth Corporation puts a bug in Bill's shoes while pretending to correct their fit. The McGuffin must have been an ordinary-looking business card, Roger concludes, and Bill recalls giving one to a Rosemary Sanchez, with whom he'd chatted on the plane. Bill encounters the ancient order of Dentists, a secret organization of supermen who are battling Spaeth and the Mongoids for control of the world. Pursued by the mysterious owners of the McGuffin (they declare that Bill is receiving glimpses of the real world), Bill returns to America in search of Sanchez, while asteroids (or perhaps spaceships) strike the Earth, ejecting debris—or alien invaders. Weird, amusing, confusing, arresting, and yet the whole is disappointingly less that the sum of the myriad, often wonderful, parts.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-86223-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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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