Like a skyrocket with no stars in it, this zany first novel about a wacked-out former Florida football star starts with a whoosh, only to fizzle out embarrassingly. Rex Dupree's story begins as just another comedy about a good old boy whose drinking and fooling around have got him into deep trouble, in this case with his wife, Sarah Lynn, Lolita-esque daughter Claire Ann, and longtime mistress Max. Author Nagel shows an eye for the inspired pomposity of certain southern rituals, such as horse-racing and Florida State football games, and the character of men like Dupree: ``Was he so different from the hundreds of other good-old north Florida men and boys of Autumn, that cadre of brothers you see...in cars and pickups plastered with Gator football stickers...With plenty of beer and barbecue... with the cute wife and kids taking the old man, his rank and boorish ways as what came with the territory, they paid their dues with boring jobs, living on the edge of a horizon over which there would someday come a ship to dump on them the big bucks.'' But just as the reader settles in to watch Dupree save his marriage, buy his daughter the promised Mustang, and comfort his mistress, the tale becomes a series of satiric set-pieces with Dupree's accountant, lawyer, an old doctor friend, the local minister, each one of whom stalls the book's momentum. By the time Dupree arrives at the story's climax, the author has run out of gas. There's a preposterous divorce-court scene with a judge who considers himself the savior of women and so strips Dupree of all his money and rights, but by then it's hard to care. A puzzling waste of a good start, this southern debut-tale collapses in a hurry once the author abandons character for caricature. Any comparison to the work of Harry Crews or Barry Hannah is strictly coincidental.
Pub Date: April 28, 1995
ISBN: 1-56858-025-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
