Brilliant truths about smart lads in the days before smart bombs.
Armed but not yet dangerous, Britain’s bomber pilots grope their way to a strategy in early WWII.
Authenticity and a sneaky style that mixes borderline cliché and brutal truth distinguish this rather subversive take on a story of inept but heroic flying. Robinson (Kentucky Blues, p. 1501, etc.) has been shortlisted for the Booker (Goshawk Squadron, 1971), something of a triumph for readers who feel that the writing in the “genres” can be not only more readable but more intelligent than much literary fiction. Robinson’s trick here is to slip a raw and unpleasant truth (early British bombing was laughably ineffective) in amongst the antic comings and goings of gallant but frighteningly young pilots. The artistry is largely invisible, and the superb soundness of the facts impossible to miss. An ex-RAF fighter pilot, Robinson went back to the original documents and to the flyers themselves to reconstruct the chaotic battle waged by Britain’s poorly protected and poorly led bomber pilots, who were not only getting decimated by the Germans but badly losing the p.r. battle to the much-ballyhooed fighters in the Battle of Britain. While the newspapers were reporting gloriously effective raids on German ports and factories, the truth, as carefully sorted out by Flight Lieutenant “Skull” Skelton, Intelligence Officer of 409 Squadron, was that the boys were mostly dropping their bombs on empty spaces more often than not miles from their targets. Skelton’s battle with the facts, and the Bomber Command’s weird reluctance to deal with its losses, are just two of the stories here. Among others: the hasty marriage of a penniless pilot to a rich aristocrat, the adventures of a film team, the borrowing of a Bentley, and the findings of a brilliant young investigator with a direct link to Churchill. Readers be warned: appealing characters get shot down and die. It’s war, and Robinson never lets you forget it.
Brilliant truths about smart lads in the days before smart bombs.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-304-36310-3
Page Count: 316
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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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