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ANGELS IN A HARSH WORLD

An eccentric theosophical novel that marries bloody-pulp plotting to sentimental theologizing † la The Celestine Prophecy. There's an audience? It's just getting started. Bradley will embark on a national tour and now has a film option, while his company, Mountaintop Entertainment, already has its head in the clouds for a December 1998 release. Meantime, this is one virtual eggnog of a novel, sliding from a Capraesque It's a Wonderful Life opening into the gray dismals of Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky into a trough of Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Maugham's The Razor's Edge, and a climax not so distant from Indiana Jones versus Nazi occultists as white magic fights black magic. Back in 1932, Haley Olsten, 22, the daughter of a Freemason in Boston who reads Bishop Leadbeater's Invisible Helpers for serious information about nature's troublesome fundamentals and angelic guidance for her mortal life, decides to accompany her best friend Ann to India, where Ann's fiancÇ Reginald, a British officer, has fallen ill and wants to marry quickly. Though a godsend in looks, with eyes that might melt steel, Haley is beset off and on by a seemingly genetic depression. In India, she loses her head over the extremely rich, philanthropic, high-born Britisher David Hampton. But when David must leave her for three months on business, Haley is caught off-guard by a maharajah—a ``black'' magician who walls her up, then forcibly, sadistically addicts her to heroin. A ``good'' Indian next helps her to escape, but he himself falls into a tiger trap while Ann—after weeks spent wandering without food in the jungle and the desert—is rescued by J., a Hindu of the Secret Brotherhood. Haley devotes three years of her life to the company of J. as they roam to various Tibetan monasteries, getting theosophized like crazy. She's then sent to Berlin to fight Hitler's occultists in a head-to-head blowout. Fantastic. Awesome. Strangely compelling as goofy moments interrupt flying brain matter and other battle horrors. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-399-14359-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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