A CURIOUS MATTER OF MEN WITH WINGS

Name: A CURIOUS MATTER OF MEN WITH WINGS
Author: F. Rutledge Hammes
ISBN: 978-1-7325398-2-2

by F. Rutledge Hammes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2018

A promising beginning. Readers with an interest in folklore, fantasy, and Southern letters alike will find this a treat.

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Magical realism comes to the Carolina Lowcountry in this quietly elegant debut novel by Hammes (Director, Creative Writing Program/Charleston County School of the Arts).

The “men with wings” of the title is no metaphor: There are men with wings flying about, “flocks of winged men in the sky,” and they’re not angels—even if, as we learn, they helped enslaved African people escape from the rice fields of the South Carolina coast and make their way north, and they continue to help by showing where game is hiding and where wells should be dug. One white family, the Walpoles, lives among the Gullah people, and when their daughter disappears in a moment worthy of The Secret of Roan Inish, that family begins to fall to pieces. It’s the girl’s brothers, Bohicket and Ley, who try to hold things together, meanwhile hatching plots of their own to find young Dew: “Had she drowned? They couldn’t say. Or had she been kidnapped by those, uh…creatures in the sky?” Revenge will be theirs, if only they can find the answer and maybe castrate the evildoers—and if Dew in fact survived the tumble from their johnboat into the waves. The search for Dew frames much of the story, but the real virtues of this well-spun yarn are its portrayal of the dynamic of a decidedly eccentric family and revealing look inside the little-known world of the island people, whose folk beliefs date back many centuries and prove to be of help in the Walpoles’ travails. Hammes often writes with a poet’s touch (“He just stood there aghast, quietly staring down at the question-mark shape of this last and final answer”), and if the story wanders into increasingly improbable territory, it’s one for which readers will gladly suspend disbelief.

A promising beginning. Readers with an interest in folklore, fantasy, and Southern letters alike will find this a treat.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-7325398-2-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: SFK Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.