A short, lively volume that will leave the reader wanting much more.
Rashidi (The Outcast, 2014, etc.) returns with a second volume of short stories about Iran.
As in his previous collection of short fiction, Rashidi offers a selection of stories of village life in pre-revolution Iran. In “Game Over,” a group of children awaits the death of a neighbor’s sick mother, hoping their neighbor will return their ball after she’s gone. In “Romance In The Lane,” a curious boy watches a harried man, continually humiliated by his wife, fall into the arms of another woman. In “Batool,” a lisping orphan girl appears suddenly in the life of a family, only to disappear again. Told from the perspectives of boys and young men, these stories observe daily scenes with a fresh energy that withholds moral judgment but revels in absurdity. At times poignant but more often funny and lighthearted, the tales resonate across rifts of culture and time. This volume is shorter than its predecessor; its stories, more polished and lean. Rashidi’s voice, while strong before, has become more assured, spinning sentences effortlessly: “The bulk of Agha Kamal’s body resembled one of those long, oval Persian melons, crowned by his small head, on top of which was a bald patch, bordered with thinning frizzy hair....His tiny feet stuck out from the bottom of his short crinkled trousers like a pair of dormice.” The prose is measured and distinctive, drawing the reader in with little more than rhythm and description. Narrators are generally stand-ins for the audience: the objects of interest are their neighbors, as unknowable to the reader as they are to the narrators (or as our neighbors are to us). Rashidi accomplishes much in these five stories.
A short, lively volume that will leave the reader wanting much more.Pub Date: March 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1785072802
Page Count: 66
Publisher: New Generation Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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