The real thing.
A hypnotic novella and three quirky stories from the second winner of the Katherine Anne Porter award in short fiction.
The prize here is for “Diving with the Devil,” a dreamy little joy: When a group of friends go diving for a summer on a remote Bahamian key, it’s an opportunity for narrator Peter Cole to explore a cultural fugue of cranky bush pilots, wizened fisherman so long on the beaches their news is all 40 years old, bratty Americans who can’t stop their drunken rants about old romantic conquests, and the blend of superstition and suspicion that results when it turns out that the group’s divemaster may have something to do with “the virus”—local code for drug running. Just as immediate as that, though, is Cole’s old feeling for the woman who is now his wife’s friend, and a new feeling for the spouse of a poor diver who leaves the Bahamas after his first trip to the deep. And deep is the final lesson: the immersion into a world close to home, yet weighted by emotional pressure, an underwater lilt, and a soothing slow-motion language. Shaw’s short stories are quirky and engaging as well. “Holding Pattern at D.C. International” tells of the squalid lives of employees whose only excitement comes from intra-clique politics and the potential of too many planes in the air, and a bunch of Air Force men in “A Cure for Gravity” convalesce together in a hospital for those with uncertain injuries, though the new captain is lucid enough to note that “There is drama in our madness, even a sense of purpose, albeit somewhat misguided. But men with only broken hearts are laughingstocks.” The true excitement comes, though, from the fact that even the novella here was once much shorter, and that this is a writer ready to make a significant move toward even longer work.
The real thing.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-57441-170-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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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