An astonishingly ambitious first novel from Mexican writer and former scientist Rebolledo, winner of the Mobil Corporation's 15th annual Pegasus Prize for Literature. It's the story, set in 18th-century Europe (mainly Paris) and Mexicoand, in part, in the futureof the varied education enjoyed and suffered by Fausto Rasero, an intellectually curious young Spaniard, mysteriously bald since birth, whose innate sophistication and unconventional magnetism bring him into intriguingly close contact with many of the great figures of the Enlightenment. Fausto is befriended by Diderot but modestly declines to write an introduction for the EncyclopÇdie. He becomes an intimate of Voltaire's. He hears the moppet prodigy Mozart play. A climax of sorts is reached when Fausto debates political theory with Robespierre, Rousseau, and Danton, among others, just before the Revolution drives him out of Paris. Other climaxes occur during Fausto's lovemaking, in whichin an amusing lift from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbowhis orgasms (with Madame de Pompadour, among many, many others) trigger visions of violence and carnage that we recognize as genocidal refinements achieved by modern warfarers, and from which Fausto concludes: ``Human inventiveness is inexhaustible. We can do anything we want to.'' That seems to be the aesthetic that powers Rasero, an imposing omnium-gatherum that vibrates with energy and purpose despite its longueurs. They are unfortunately many: a plethora of just barely dramatized theoretical chemistry and Newtonian physics, for example, and a gratingly redundant succession of sex scenes all but indistinguishable one from the other. Nonetheless, the novel teems with witty conversation and vigorous incident and is further buoyed by such pleasures as Rebolledo's ingenious characterization of Voltaire as a mysterious hybrid compounded of paranoia, moral courage, hypochondria, and indomitable vitality. An exhilarating, frustrating mixture of originality and regurgitated arcana. It's filled with quaint and curious lore, steam-powered conveyances, and state-of-the-art engines of destruction, but it smells of the lamp.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-8071-2004-9
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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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