An earnest, plodding, and disjointed second novel from the author of Pepe R°os (1991, not reviewed). Cano's string of barely related anecdotes focuses on a group of Chicanos who volunteer to go Vietnam during the height of the war. Most of their fathers had served in WW II, and when all of the young men are of age they too feel a duty to serve their country. The author gives us glimpses of his subjects by skipping from past to present, from the battlefield to Little League, from sketches of life in the barrio to scenes of veterans coping with the war's psychic scars. One drops out and heads to Spain, where he winds up with a rich white American tourist who wants to be a Gypsy. One succumbs to drugs, another can't let go of the memory of his fallen friends, and yet another cracks and simply disappears into the jungle. The fragments set in Vietnam are the most interesting, especially when the author focuses on the teenaged soldiers as they cope with an unseen and unknown enemy that's constantly mowing down their comrades. But, unfortunately, Cano frequently lectures the reader on how the Chicanos served in disproportionately high numbers and how white commanders gave them all the dirty and dangerous work. Much of the story, in fact, reads like a travel logR&R in Bangkok, a cross-country trip to a friend's grave, a ski holiday in Spainscenes having little dramatic purpose. In the same way, the scattered bits and anecdotes tend not to come together into a whole, satisfyingly cohesive narrative, while there's incentive, too, to push past the first few static and repetitive scenes. Well-meaning, but too much like an overlong political tract to gain power as fiction.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-55885-144-5
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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
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