L.I.E.

Name: L.I.E.
Author: David Hollander
ISBN: 0-375-50443-5

by David Hollander ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

One finishes L.I.E. both frustrated by its vagueness and, paradoxically, confident that its talented author is capable of...

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Formal innovations are the most interesting features of this rangy first novel, which assembles ten interrelated stories and a brief coda to trace the uneasy maturing of a Long Island teenager.

“L.I.E.” stands for Long Island Expressway, the thoroughfare that bisects the suburban territory inhabited by Harlan Kessler, who's 15 in 1985, the year of the earliest episodes here. Over the next five years, we observe him as an importunate teenager desperate to lose his virginity, high-school jock and amateur rock musician, I.R.S. clerk, and, finally, to his amazement and gratitude, in love with and loved by a beautiful, warmhearted girl named Sarah. Hollander repeatedly employs series of brief parallel scenes juxtaposing various characters' apparently distinct, eventually interconnected actions—most notably in “Dog = God,” the story of a memorable Halloween when Harlan and his then girlfriend almost make love, his parents quarrel at a party and return home unexpectedly, and the Kesslers' beloved mutt Pepper wheezes through his last hours on earth. Other chapters focus on a wild teen party that climaxes with a supposed UFO sighting; a raucous “Sunday Dinner” presented as a one-act play that reimagines Kessler family dynamics as Dickens's A Christmas Carol, TV’s The Honeymooners, and several Beatles songs; and a climactic flurry of "Quotations" from family and friends speculating on the fate of the disappeared Harlan (who either is or isn't still with Sarah and has or hasn't committed suicide). It's a bumpy ride of a book, often sharply observed and intriguing; just as often, flawed by its protagonist's elusive (indeed obscured) personality. We end up not knowing Harlan Kessler very much better at the end of the story than we did at its beginning; if Hollander intended this, the reader can only wonder why.

One finishes L.I.E. both frustrated by its vagueness and, paradoxically, confident that its talented author is capable of better work.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-50443-5

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.