A prison tale that offers a compelling setup but lacks momentum.
A novella chronicles a condemned man’s final day before his execution.
In 2010, in an alternative America, a man named Ed Davis sits in a prison cell waiting to die. In 24 hours, he will face a firing squad for murdering a man on the city hall steps of his hometown of Elgin, California. After a decade of terrorist attacks and draconian security laws, President Trent came to power two years earlier and instituted a despotic, right-wing regime. Ed has long been a critic of the country’s rightward shift. In Elgin, he and his Sunday morning jogging club—the Slow Old Guys, as they were known—even attempted to wage their own nonviolent resistance on the local level. Then everything fell tragically apart, leaving Ed to contemplate his life’s wasted moments: “What I don’t know is: what would I take back? What I don’t know is: which of those minutes that seemed wasted led to others that weren’t? Maybe led to others that were great—a lifetime that was great in so many ways. Yet—they all led finally to this night, this place, this cell.” As the hours pass, he meets with friends, enemies, and bureaucrats, all the while digging deeper into his memory in order to find some antidote to his fear. Author Davis’ (In All Things, 2014, etc.) prose is sharp, particularly when he describes Ed’s present, slowly ratcheting up the tension with each tick of the clock: “There’s the door for the lunch-cart. A little late. Almost twenty after the hour, but what do I care? I’m not going anyplace—at least not for a while.” Less satisfying are the expositional passages that explain how America and Ed came to be in their current predicament, which are a tad dull and disappointingly uninventive. The author explains in his foreword that this novella was itself written in 24 hours back in 2002 (and as such, its political bent is actually a reaction to President George W. Bush, not Donald Trump). This perhaps explains some of the story’s shortcomings, but nevertheless leaves readers with a work that is not nearly as intriguing or revelatory as its premise promises.
A prison tale that offers a compelling setup but lacks momentum.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9860697-6-5
Page Count: 174
Publisher: The Wedgewood Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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