American readers will want a glossary of Anglo-Irish slang, but anyone who reads this will catch the brooding strangeness of...
One man's descent into the hell of madness, pursued by men who may have killed his best friend, as told by the acclaimed novelist and poet (The Bend for Home, 1998, etc.).
Ollie Ewing, an Irish carpenter, is living in meager surroundings in Sligo, trying to recover from a shattering experience as an immigrant worker in London. At the outset of the story, told in the first person by Ewing, he's working in a supermarket, "a great shop to think in," and living in a rundown house inhabited by a group of struggling artists. He's been living inside his own head for so long, victimized by his London crises, the nature of which are only gradually revealed, that he is "sick of [his] own consciousness." Slowly, painstakingly, he begins to reconnect with the world, starting with his housemates, then his mother and, finally, his reproachful father, whom he visits in Coventry. Only after that reconciliation does Ollie—and Healy—reel back the months to recount the devastating events that sent him on a downward spiral. One of hundreds of itinerant Irish laborers in London, Ollie stumbles into a protection and hiring racket (vaguely reminiscent of the corrupt doings in On the Waterfront). He angers the wrong people and finds himself torn between paranoiac fantasy and genuine danger. Eventually, both his friend Marty and his brother Redmond fall victim to real violence from his real enemies, leaving Ollie to grapple alone with his demons and a brutally insensitive English justice system. Healy tells his story with a dark, jittery humor, filled with jagged rhythms, punctuated by the bizarre reveries of Ollie's wandering mind. It all ends not with Ollie's rebirth but with the traumas that precede it: the result is an odd, troubling read.
American readers will want a glossary of Anglo-Irish slang, but anyone who reads this will catch the brooding strangeness of this eerie, difficult book.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-100578-8
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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
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