An earnest, overwritten first novel from British poet Hartnett, this set in a fictional Jewish ghetto during WW II. Hartnett's relentlessly bleak tale begins with the surviving members of the Schultz family being transported from Vienna to a city near the Eastern front where the Nazis are congregating Jews before sending them off to concentration camps. Alicia Schultz, a strong-willed widow, must find ways to take care of her temperamental 15-year-old son, as well as a mystical half-uncle and a frail grandmother. When Alicia reaches the ghetto, she immediately meets Josef, a former lover who just happens to be one of the Jewish functionaries entrusted by the Nazis to help with administration. The kindhearted Josef tries to protect the ghetto's religious leaders while also keeping a secret record of everything the Nazis are doing and a journal of how the Jews are keeping their spirit alive. Being in charge of keeping lists of everyone, Josef is able to protect Alicia. Although collaborating, he believes that's the best way to save Jews from the camps. Alicia's son, however, wants to fight more openly and is drawn to the underground resistance movement. This naturally causes stress when Josef marries Alicia to further protect the Schultz family. Written at a high pitch, Hartnett's debut is weighed down by the constant dread and fatigue of the oppressed—an understandable state that, sadly, isn't shown through authentic-sounding characters but, rather, is hammered at through overwrought prose (``The flame hissed its death against her wetted fingertips''). A noble if disappointing effort filled with the familiar—and with a mere echo of the many authentically emotional chronicles of the Holocaust already in existence.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-224-03972-5
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Jonathan Cape/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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
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