by Emily Prager ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1991
A novel of strong ideas by Prager (a story collection, A Visit From the Footbinder, 1982) that's let down by characters with less- than-riveting credibility. For her 40th birthday, New Yorker Eve, increasingly aware of her fellow-citizens' ``compassion fatigue,'' decides to have the number of a female Holocaust victim, seen in an old photograph, tattooed on her wrist. This memento mori, which Eve compares to the MIA bracelets that she and her friends used to wear, will (she hopes) provoke questions; keep the woman's memory alive; and generally raise consciousness about the Nazis' treatment of women. Eve's action upsets her French lover, Charles, who now reveals that he's actually Jewish and not Catholic as she had supposed. When Eve refuses to have the tattoo removed, Charles moves out. Soon Eve is busy telling stories about Eva, the victim, to anyone who asks, though it's a somewhat select group. This Eva has many incarnations: from a Jewish mother and her baby trying to hide to a Catholic social-worker horrified by the Nazis' treatment of the handicapped and mentally ill. Each incarnation represents some aspect of Nazi policies, which Eve has been reading up on. An accident in which her tattoo is covered by stitches provides the catharsis. Eve finds out to whom the number really belonged; Charles returns; and she finally feels that the experiment was worthwhile. A provocative theme, and the individual Eva stories are good; but Eve and her friends are a very wooden group, whose stagy conversations and banal apercus trivialize the novel's underlying premise.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-57490-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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BOOK REVIEW
by Emily Prager
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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