by Daniel Gumbiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2018
An unfortunately bland sketch of addiction, millennial listlessness, and the redemptive quality of craftsmanship with some...
An opioid addict–turned–apprentice boat builder tries to find himself on the Northern California coast.
We meet 27-year-old “digital refugee” Eli “Berg” Koenigsberg at a low point in his life: After a concussion led to an opioid addiction, then rehab, he has moved to Talinas, a town on the Northern California coast, where he hopes to establish “a sober life”—instead he’s breaking into houses for drugs. But within pages, Berg cleans himself up—at least a little. He gets a job, manages to wean himself temporarily off pills, and then apprentices himself to Alejandro Vega, a boat builder who tells him things like “stop thinking about the result. Stop wanting [the work] to be over right away and I promise everything will go better.” Alejandro is “a genius,” his mind “borderless and kinetic,” and under his influence Berg learns not just to work with wood, but to “get outside of himself.” But will Alejandro’s healing influence be enough to combat the lurking urges of addiction? Gumbiner’s debut is an underachieving redemption tale, and its failures are familiar to that particular genus of didactic literature—namely: The difficulties from which the characters need redeeming feel like excuses for the author to show us how exactly redemption can be had. Gumbiner could have sidestepped this with detail, by diving deeply into his human subjects—but his novel, like its characters, aspires toward simplicity rather than complexity. The result is that everything—the problem, the solutions, the quirky Northern California vibe, even the potentially fascinating fact that Berg robbed Alejandro’s house before later becoming his apprentice—feels like a plot device, and thus unconvincing, one-dimensional, bland. There is the occasional arresting line; for example, the skin on an addict’s face looks like it has been “stretched tight and then stapled across his jawline.” But the book is mostly composed of apathetic sentences (a supporting character’s storytelling is “disjointed and difficult to follow, like an avant-garde novel”), vapid dialogue (“ ‘What’s up, Berg?…’ ‘Hi Kenneth…do you remember my girlfriend, Nell?’ ‘Hi,’ Nell said. ‘Oh hi,” Kenneth said”), and clichéd profundity (“the problem was he didn’t know what he wanted”).
An unfortunately bland sketch of addiction, millennial listlessness, and the redemptive quality of craftsmanship with some Northern California flare.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944211-55-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
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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BOOK REVIEW
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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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