A swift look at the internal struggles of one particularly unbalanced artist.
From debut author McEldowney comes a novel about the internal struggles of a young artist.
When readers first meet the narrator, a visual artist who remains nameless, he’s having a hard time sleeping in his apartment: “As I lay here awake, I watch the shadows dart from corner to corner, trying to hide from my periphery.” Seeking solace at the local laundromat, he finds an attractive girl with whom he manages to strike up a conversation, despite the fact that he’s “not exactly good with women, or even people for that matter.” As their casual chat opens the door to a date, things seem to be going reasonably well for the narrator. Back at his apartment, a talking jackalope mask named Jack offers him life advice (such as, “Enjoying yourself is important and accepting the oddities around you can be a good step in broadening your mind’s horizons and perspective”), and although the narrator continues to battle sleep-related issues, he’s still able to complete an art project. Jack provides a source of positive thinking, but a creeping force known as the Entity provides just the opposite: “Dark and deep, crackling and warped, detractive in tone,” it enjoys nothing more than filling the narrator with dismay. Will the narrator, along with Jack the mask, be able to salvage his creativity from such discord? And what of that laundromat girl with her eyes of “crystal blue stained glass”? Brief at just over 100 pages, this tale of angst and confusion moves along quickly. Some details, such as who orders what on restaurant dates (“I think I’m going to get the manicotti,” the girl explains), do little for the story’s progress. However, these tidbits fade away quickly in the prevailing dust storm of malcontent. Overall, the book offers an empathetic journey for creative types who can relate to the narrator’s moments of doubt and self-criticism; his quest is clearly fantastical, though not improbable. Although portions of the novel may strike some readers as melodramatic (such as when images flash in the narrator’s mind of “dark, macabre things, faces, skulls and webs gnarled all in blackness”), the theme of frustration is well-played.
A swift look at the internal struggles of one particularly unbalanced artist.Pub Date: April 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5117-8582-2
Page Count: 118
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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