Sooner or later, of course, this house of cards has to come tumbling down, but Carkeet’s Candide is so winning and his...
An ebullient middle-aged child who seems incapable of fixing his own breakfast hides his involvement in a suspicious death by a comically preposterous masquerade.
Dennis Braintree’s adventures in Vermont begin when his car runs off the road and into a ditch, leading him to hail passersby, “Welcome to my crash site!” He winds up at the Ethan Allen Motel in Montpelier, where blind hostess Betsy, whose rooms have been filled by a legislative session, sticks him first in a windowless cubby, then in the room vacated by Mort Shuler. It’s here that he meets good-time girl Marge Plongeur, who makes herself at home in his Jacuzzi, sends him out for cigarettes and condoms and then vanishes after apparently swinging so hard from his chandelier that she brings it crashing down on his bed. Except that Marge hasn’t just vanished; according to Nick and Lance, a pair of police officers Denny runs into at the airport, she’s been pushed off the balcony by whoever rented the room and left footprints outside in the snow. That person, naturally, is Denny, and his goose would be cooked if Nick hadn’t taken Denny for his old friend Homer Dumpling, Betsy’s nephew, who spent the last three years in Florida. Denny, recently fired from his job at a magazine aimed at model-railroad buffs, sees no reason that he shouldn’t accept the role that’s just been handed to him, and Carkeet (The Error of Our Ways, 1997, etc.) moves heaven and earth to show how he can get away with the masquerade against all odds—mainly because Denny embraces each new obstacle as a challenge and never shows the slightest fear.
Sooner or later, of course, this house of cards has to come tumbling down, but Carkeet’s Candide is so winning and his plotting so deft that the day of reckoning is as graceful as the moment when the juggler catches all five balls without missing a beat.Pub Date: March 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59020-304-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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