From a complicated business deal to a teenager’s first kiss, Schwarzschild works with the quiet authority of a master. This...
Life gets complicated for a con man with a conscience in a thrilling first novel that’s family drama with a strong suspense element.
Max Wolinsky is back in Philadelphia for his son Nathan’s bar mitzvah. It’s been a year since Max took off for Florida, after wife Sandy left him for the gardener. Max is staying with his father, Caleb, and his uncle Abe, a stroke victim. Both brothers used to be textiles salesmen, and Max, a college dropout, had joined them for a while before crossing the line into small scams; right now, he’s about to sell some nonexistent real estate to a prosperous Philly couple, the Goulds. Max has his rules: Don’t hurt anybody physically; don’t leave anyone destitute. Unfortunately, he knows people who are less scrupulous. Johnny Sklarman, a messed-up former college buddy, and his thuggish associate Dexter want a piece of the action. Then there’s Spiller, a businessman who’s also the scoutmaster at Nathan’s temple. Spiller has a big project cooking, evidently legit, and Johnny and Dexter are sniffing around that, too. Meanwhile, Max, a fast worker, has started dating an attractive local woman, Estelle. Schwarzschild keeps the story moving while deepening his family portrait. Family members protect each other with kindnesses large and small, forming a lifeline to the next generation. There’s the original Wolinsky, from Odessa, who battled thugs himself; there’s the brace of salesmen, Abe dreaming big, Caleb more “old school,” going by the book. Now Nathan, after his bar mitzvah, is a “responsible man” too, grilling his father in a scene so raw it hurts. For Max is at the center, tempted by easy money but willing to start over. His soul hangs in the balance through turns of plot and bare-knuckled violence, internal and external dramas both packing a wallop.
From a complicated business deal to a teenager’s first kiss, Schwarzschild works with the quiet authority of a master. This is one terrific debut.Pub Date: April 28, 2005
ISBN: 1-56512-409-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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