by Dan Pope ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2003
Still, this modest and appealing debut meanders too much for its own good and never acquires enough shape or shading.
A boy’s turbulent coming-of-age in suburban Connecticut during the 1970s.
It’s not easy to be nostalgic about the era of Watergate, Gerald Ford, and the leisure suit, but when you’re 12 the world can look exciting no matter where you meet it. Our hero Timmy, on the cusp of adolescence, still lives mainly within the confines of family squabbles and schoolboy pranks, but he’s beginning to pick up hints that life is not all beer and skittles. His parents seem to be breaking up, for one thing: They have very different tastes (Mom a straitlaced Protestant, Dad a volatile Italian Catholic) and argue nonstop. Plus, Dad seems to have a girlfriend on the side. Timmy has played doctor with Sissi Mandelbaum, but he’s still more interested in hanging out with Sissi’s brother Steve and Tony (“the Tiger”) Papadakis. Timmy, the baby of the family, tends to follow the lead of his brother Albert, while sister Daphne is siding with their father in his marital feuds—especially after his mother throws Dad out of the house. Dad is no less shocked than the children, but he eventually makes it up to Mom and returns home a few months later to start all over again. Newcomer Pope gives us a portrait of an age as much as anything else, and the daily referents in Timmy’s life—Elton John, The Poseidon Adventure, Happy Days, Richard Nixon—suffuse the story like water in an aquarium. If it all seems somewhat haphazardly thrown together and without a clear focus or sense of direction—well, that’s what childhood is like.
Still, this modest and appealing debut meanders too much for its own good and never acquires enough shape or shading.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-42236-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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BOOK REVIEW
by Dan Pope
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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