by Dixie Distler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 11, 2019
A welcoming, consistently interesting exploration of the world of A Christmas Carol.
Distler offers a sequel to Dickens’ famous Christmas story.
The latest from Distler (Tabor: The First Christian, 2017, etc.) begins just where A Christmas Carol leaves off: Ebenezer Scrooge, his heart transformed by the visitations of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come, has pledged to his former downtrodden clerk, Bob Cratchit, that he’s a changed man. He gives Cratchit a guinea and promises that his wages will be enormously increased henceforth, the news of which elicits disbelief from Cratchit’s wife (“Things like this don’t happen to people like us,” she tells him). And more importantly, he swears that he will help Cratchit’s sickly son, Tiny Tim, to be well again, specifically by consulting with the best doctor in London and a French specialist. During the key operation, while Tiny Tim is under ether, the boy appears to die. When he revives moments later, he’s had a vision: He meets a woman named Mary, who tells him the holiday of Christmas is under siege back on Earth, and the tension on the subject is increased when the Reverend Potts both attacks Christmas as a pagan practice of the Old World and excommunicates the whole Cratchit family for accepting the help of medical science in curing Tiny Tim. Distler writes all of this in a warm, inviting narrative voice that skillfully captures all of Dickens’ characters (and, in time, Dickens himself). The combination of short, one-scene chapters and some lean storytelling makes the book a quick, enjoyable reading experience (unlike a great deal of Dickens pastiche fiction), and new characters like reformed street urchin “Chancy” help to make this old familiar story feel new. Distler has a light, natural hand for Dickensian plot twists; the book stays involving right up to its predictable but surprisingly moving final pages.
A welcoming, consistently interesting exploration of the world of A Christmas Carol.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73296-957-5
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Heart of Dixie Ink
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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