by Edmund Keeley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2001
The details of individual stories are gripping and real (Keeley has also written extensively about Greek culture and...
From prolific novelist Keeley (School for Pagan Lovers, 1993, etc.), a sincere if somewhat uneven story about the Nazi massacre of an entire Greek village near the end of WWII, and the effort decades later to pin the deed on a prominent Austrian statesman (Kurt Waldheim by any other name).
Jackson Ripaldo, a frustrated journalist-turned-mystery-writer in Washington, is called to investigate the atrocity by his old Austrian friend, Count Wittekind. Ripaldo, familiar with the part of Greece where the massacre took place, accepts the challenge and goes right to the village, where he interviews a former commander of the local resistance. The man tells him what he knows, but makes it clear that his wife knows more, since she herself worked in the Nazis’ headquarters as a cleaning woman. From her, Ripaldo receives a tale of passion and torment, as she reveals that she was in love with a German medical orderly whose death she believes triggered the massacre. The plot thickens when Ripaldo goes to Austria, where he interviews the orderly’s boss, a former Wehrmacht officer who tried to use the woman as a go-between with the resistance when he wanted to desert. He indicates that the orderly survived the war and came home to Austria—and, indeed, Ripaldo finds the man’s house, only to learn that he died five years earlier. He left a journal, however, an account that tells Ripaldo and the Count what happened just prior to the massacre and who was responsible for ordering it. Outraged, the American publicly confronts the subject of his investigation—with predictable results.
The details of individual stories are gripping and real (Keeley has also written extensively about Greek culture and translated contemporary Greek poetry), but the deposition-style narrative and the dud of an American protagonist keep the story from realizing its dramatic potential.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-893996-17-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: White Pine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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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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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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