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In the Casebeers’ debut novel, 12-year-old Herman “Hermy” Auerbach spends the last months of World War II separated from his parents and trying to figure out where he belongs in a turbulent world.Hermy’s parents’ divorce, along with the upheaval of wartime, has left him feeling adrift and vulnerable. Over the past few years, he’s lived in a house with his aunt and a violent step-uncle with post-traumatic stress disorder; in a Boise, Idaho, ballpark with his father, who sunbathed naked on the field; with the Schultzes, whose son Karl was relentlessly cruel; and currently with the Williams family. There he shares a room with the youngest son, Sonny, which is full of canaries bred by Mrs. Williams, and he wakes every day surrounded by song. Although the Williamses are kind, he misses his father and mother, and he’s tormented by bad memories, such as Karl burning out the eyes of his pet turtle with a magnifying glass, and his step-uncle shooting his Japanese-American friend, Tom. All these experiences entwine through the prose, as the boy’s past intrudes on his present, and the novel shifts back and forth rapidly in time. The Casebeers’ prose is solid, even beautiful at the sentence level, with chains of descriptors: “Enormous with wild carrot-orange hair, lids heavy over dim and drowsing brown eyes, Gladys Williams sprawled at the large rectangular table.” Unfortunately, its use of multiple complex sentences in a row often lessens their impact. Overall, the book’s stream-of-consciousness prose gives it a dreamlike quality, but it often becomes confusing. The authors attempt to ease the transitions by putting the flashbacks in italics; however, the flashbacks’ frequency makes the book difficult to follow.An ambitious, literary coming-of-age tale that aims high, and almost reaches its goals.
None NonePub Date: July 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494423766
Page Count: 280
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Here’s a backlash against the backlash assailing working mothers: Mothers who work outside the home, says Chira, can and do raise healthy, responsible children, no matter what Penelope Leach or other advocates of full-time, at-home mothering preach. Chira is married with two children and also deputy foreign editor of the New York Times. Despite a husband with flexible hours who delights in being a father and a loving and experienced babysitter, she suffered the working mother’s share of guilt and anxiety. But Chira is fighting back with this book, which sets out both anecdotal and scientific research to support the flip side of mother bashing—that children whose mothers go out to work are no more at risk of twisted psychological development than children whose mothers are at home full-time. In the first part of the book, Chira chips at the popular baby books—Leach, Brazelton, even Spock—and cites recent studies that suggest that while mothers should understand their children’s needs, others can satisfy those needs, even including helping babies develop trust and security. Chira also takes on the Promise Keepers, the dearth of quality child care, the role of fathers (it is never working fathers who are faulted for abandoning their children), custody battles and government politics and policy regarding families. She notes scathingly the dual messages from the right that fault middle-class mothers who work but wants welfare mothers out of the home and into the job market. She calls for “reimagining motherhood” by giving weight to parents’ as well as children’s needs, accepting that mothers are in the work force to stay, and offering social supports for families. Somewhat fragmented because the author never fully develops any of the many ideas she throws out, this book is nevertheless a hand-holder for all those mothers who see themselves labeled as selfish and uncaring because they choose to bring home a paycheck. (Radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017327-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
An entertaining if somewhat flawed look at how a middle-aged hobbyist finds new meaning in life through rebuilding a classic motorcycle. Haefele is a frustrated novelist and academic who works, albeit happily, as a tree surgeon. Deciding after visiting an annual motorcycle rally to invest in a vintage American-made Indian Chief motorcycle, he finds himself friends with bikers and other assorted characters whom he would normally avoid. In the end, he finds that he has much in common with these folks, even as he has managed to sell his first novel and, by book’s end, is back on the academic trail chasing down university jobs. Because of the setting (Montana) and motif (motorcycles), Haefele’s book is doomed to comparisons with Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. These similarities notwithstanding, Haefele is able to guard himself well from any influence anxiety, though in one particular scene where he uses beer can slivers as a maintenance tool, the similarity is a little too close. Haefele’s style is more relaxed and he isn—t, for the most part, prone to the didacticism that mires down Pirsig’s work. Unfortunately, the bottom begins to fall out when, for instance, the “naming ceremony” for his newborn daughter, Phoebe, is juxtaposed against the episode in which he names his motorcycle the “Millennium Flyer.” By the end, Haefele has dubbed his biker friend and tree-surgeon assistant Chaz the “mythical trickster” who has kept him going on his quest to rebuild his bike, and even more clumsily, he draws open comparisons between the clothes bought for his daughter and the parts bought to help build his cycle when most readers would catch the similarity on their own. These slips are not enough to ruin Rebuilding the Indian, though, which leaves one curious to see his forthcoming novel.
Pub Date: June 5, 1998
ISBN: 1-57322-099-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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