by Frank Lentricchia ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2005
An extravagantly far-fetched novel that ogles celebrity even as it professes artistic detachment.
A world-class photographer has close calls in Fidel’s Havana and Saddam’s Baghdad in the latest from novelist/critic Lentricchia (Crimes of Art and Terror, 2003, etc.).
Days before the 1962 Missile Crisis, while she was a college senior, Ruth Cohen went to Cuba and took seemingly artless photographs of ordinary Cubans that rocketed her to overnight fame, causing rumors to swirl that she had slept with both Fidel and JFK (not true, though Adlai did make a pass at her at Bobby and Ethel’s place). But something terrible happened in Havana. Ruth was the innocent dupe of two Cuban double agents working for Uncle Sam; the plot to kill Castro went awry, and a small girl died in agony before Ruth’s eyes. Ruth feels responsible for the girl’s death; she seeks anonymity and eventually gives up her career. In 1990, in Utica, N.Y., she meets Thomas Lucchesi, a dismally unsuccessful Italian-American experimental novelist; he’s 59, she’s 46. They marry the next year and retreat to the remote Adirondacks, to live on land given to Ruth by a Rockefeller. At this point, the author fastforwards to 2002, as the build-up to the war in Iraq begins. New Yorker magazine plucks Ruth from obscurity to photograph Saddam; Thomas accompanies her. The shoot is a great success, but then Thomas is grabbed by Saddam’s goons; it’s all a farcical misunderstanding, but he disappears for good. On the surface, this love story makes little sense: Why would Ruth be drawn to the wimpy, hypochondriac Thomas when she’s attracted to men of power (she enjoys Saddam, to her horror)? Buried beneath it, there’s a far more interesting story about an artist looking for redemption, though it’s mystifying that we learn nothing about Ruth’s background, but far too much about Thomas’s (and Lentricchia’s) Utica.
An extravagantly far-fetched novel that ogles celebrity even as it professes artistic detachment.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-9766593-5-2
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Ravenna Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
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BOOK REVIEW
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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