A dramatic, fast-paced fictionalization of the life of photographer and political activist Tina Modotti, by the Mexican author whose works in English translation include the novel Dear Diego (not reviewed) and the nonfiction Massacre in Mexico (1975). Poniatowska begins her crowded narrative in 1929, with the assassination of radical leader Julio Antonio Mella, Modotti's comrade-in-arms and common-law husband, and with her arrest and interrogation by authorities convinced that she knows the identity of his murderer. Then the story plunges into an extended flashback, to the WW I years when the Mexican-born ``Tinisima'' worked as a model, ``acted'' in MGM films (``I was always the harem girl, the villain, the gypsy''). There follows her long relationship with American photographer Edward Weston (as his model, then lover), her years as a ``Communist militant,'' and work for the International Red Aid, helping to resettle political refugees, and—in a vividly detailed segment worthy of comparison with Hemingway's writing on this subject—her perilous and exhausting sojourn in Spain during its Civil War. This is a very ambitious book: The century's formative political events pass by as if we're seeing them in an extended newsreel, and sharp, if frustratingly brief, cameo appearances are made by such notables as D.H. Lawrence, Diego Rivera, ``Volodya'' Mayakovsky, Alexandra Kollontai, and David Siqueiros. Poniatowska offers an especially lively characterization of the bohemian Edward Weston, stressing both his free-spirited unconventionality and his deeply held leftist principles. But she never gives us nearly as full or credible a portrayal of her potentially fascinating heroine: Modotti isn't much more, in these pages, than the sum of her enthusiasms and commitments. We know her political nature intimately, but the inner woman stays remote from us. It's a glaring weakness in an otherwise accomplished and seductively readable work. One appreciates the energy and specificity that sparkle throughout, but one misses the novel it might have been.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-27785-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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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