A unique, emotional novel about lifelong companionship and brutal social injustice.
An intense, uplifting third novel from Greco (Tommy the Quarterback, 2012, etc.) that maps an unlikely friendship as it confronts adulthood, prejudice and the mistreatment of the mentally ill.
Sandy Morelli, an Italian Catholic boy with a hot temper and a big heart, grows up in the poor part of 1950s Youngstown, Ohio. He and his neighbor Rigley Potter develop a close friendship, pretending to be pirates, exploring the wilderness, playing football and baseball, and always sticking together. Some kids tease Sandy for hanging out with a “hillbilly,” but it doesn’t bother him. As he and Rigley grow older, they attend different high schools and Sandy gets involved with football, but they still manage to spend time together on the weekends. Sandy slowly starts to realize, however, that Rigley is in fact mentally challenged. He tries to help his friend assimilate into mainstream young-adult life, even getting him a job as a golf caddy, only to see others brutally bully and tease him. The friends grow apart when Sandy leaves Youngstown to join the military, but they reunite several years later when Sandy gets a job at Wyandotte State Hospital. Throughout the novel, Greco never shies away from moments of brutal intensity, filtering them through Sandy’s tough yet empathetic voice. The author depicts Rigley as childish, but Sandy never patronizes him, as he understands Rigley’s simple, whimsical intellect. The book indicates the passing of time with subtle but accurate regional slang and hints of pop culture, and Greco’s careful pacing of Sandy’s gradual realization of his friend’s challenges will break readers’ hearts. The author takes on heavy, difficult subject matter here but always brings the story back to its foundation: the unbreakable bond between childhood friends.
A unique, emotional novel about lifelong companionship and brutal social injustice.Pub Date: April 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497336513
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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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