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CHILDREN AND FOOLS

Does history murder innocence? In this exquisite collection of 34 stories and reminiscences, the Austrian poet (192188) hazards many guesses but offers no simple answers. Clear identities are difficult to glean from Fried's untidy parade of dead family members, legendary heroes, midcentury villains, and shifting versions of himself: Children often seem vastly more heroic than their feckless elders, and fools sometimes possess secret wisdom. In ``St. George and His Dragon,'' we learn that George and the dreaded serpent loved each other like brothers; the mythical slaying was more like an attempt to release the dragon from his heartbreak. Other stories confront the specter of the Holocaust from odd angles and scourge human brutality with feinting lashes. ``Deliverance'' finds a New York clerk and former Hitler Youth consigning his old governess to death in the concentration camps by replacing her immigration file with an old newspaper; the protagonist of ``Hounded to Death'' celebrates a lively existence spent in terrified flight from his pursuers. Fried lays on the irony pretty thick in an allegorizing, postwar style that American readers more accustomed to the likes of Updike and Cheever may not always get, but it's justified by the agony of his experiences. From his own grim scavenger hunt through Auschwitz and the meadows of Birkenau (``My Doll in Auschwitz'') to the account of his family's drawing-room furniture, maintained by his grandmother until the Nazis dragged her away (``The Green Suite''), Fried's alienation from any semblance of a normal childhood (he escaped Vienna for London in 1938) pervades his writing. The concluding essays chronicle his early adolescence, first as he struggles to evade the Nazis (``My Heroic Age'') and later while he adjusts to a life in exile (``The Unworthy Families''; ``The Commission''; ``LÑzchen''). It would be tough to locate a finer example of wit and intelligence triumphing over barbarism and horror.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-85242-211-4

Page Count: 164

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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