Brenna (The Book of Mamie, 1989) comes of age a second time, here in the guise of a biker called Jasper John—an adolescent rebel who eventually settles down with some help from assorted weirdos who work in a San Diego diner. Fat Stanley's place is your run-of-the-mill greasy spoon, but most of its hangers-on could have been scripted by Quentin Tarrantino. Fat Stanley himself has a baroque streak, is fond of opera, and is devoted to Helga—a waitress dying of cancer—and her children. Mary Quick, another waitress, is a born-again Christian whose conversion from prostitution hasn't driven her from the arms of Henry Hank, her old pimp—a con man and spinner of tales who takes the 22-year-old Jasper in hand and tries to make something of him. When Godot (one of Jasper's college teachers) gets fired, Henry convinces the professor that the real money is in porn and that Jasper is his leading man. Before long, Jasper is living with Henry and Mary and working as the lead in Godot's very free Shakespearian adaptation (ReemHerHold & JuleeTit), until an argument between Jasper and his girlfriend, Didi Godunov, disrupts the production. Didi is a poet given to self-indulgence on professional grounds, and she succeeds in teaching Jasper that ``everything written, even `true' confession, is fiction, is, ultimately, a lie.'' By the close, Helga's death has managed to sober up most of the characters, and Jasper starts to get the hang of being adult and thinking about his future as a grownup and a writer. He gives no sign of turning into Henry V, however, and seems to need Henry Hank's misadventures to the very end. Loose and rambling to a fault: Brenna doesn't set up the outline of his story soon enough, and seems not to know what to do with it once it arrives. Stylistically assured, then, but badly stunted.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47962-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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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