by Daniel Wagner ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2004
No meaning, but easy to read, even sort of fun, like a comic book.
Wagner debuts with a little toy about deep thoughts for those who probably don’t really want to have them but may think they do.
There’s a saying in the family, “life is a book and a movie”—meaning that when bad things befall you, thinking of them as movie scenes can make you take them less seriously, and as book scenes can make you understand them better. Readers may wonder what this has to do with Wagner’s wisp of a novel, though the narrative does switch back and forth between little movie-script bits on the one hand, and conventional book-passage “scenes” on the other. Two brothers, Jim (a frustrated writer) and Andy (eccentric player of electronic games and creator of ideas for TV ads), are apparently involved in a top-secret, high-risk undertaking of some kind. For a long time, we’re not let in on what it is, though we do get to see Jim’s wife hanging around home and wondering where Jim is while their two kids, a boy and a girl, quarrel a lot, and we do get a lot of scenes about two young adults, Liz and Lou, who appear to have been—yup—stranded on a desert island. They’re not sure how they got there (really), but reader-interest lies in the question of whether the rather smug, arrogant, and stand-offish Lou will keep up his unresponsiveness to the sexual and personal charms of the sweet and lovely Liz. But, hey, don’t plan on ever finding out. What you will find out is that Jim and Andy’s dangerous project has to do with Liz and Lou. Guess they stuck the kids out there, but dunno. When Liz and Lou take off on a raft, Jim and Andy panic (why? dunno) and zoom around on motorboats trying to find them. Do they? Dunno. Does Liz seduce Lou? Dunno. Do they survive? Same.
No meaning, but easy to read, even sort of fun, like a comic book.Pub Date: July 19, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4188-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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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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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