by Frederick Reiken ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2000
Young as he is, Reiken knows the territory of emotional commitment and confusion as well as anybody writing today. Beautiful...
The gentle empathy for the intricate muddle of family and romantic relationships that distinguished Reiken’s accomplished debut, The Odd Sea (1998), is also a dominant feature of this considerably more ambitious successor.
The story, a plaintive demonstration of the truism “that we all lose things. That loving someone means having to bear the pain of separation,” is set in northern New Jersey (Livingston) and Florida in the late 1970s and afterward, and in the minds and memories of its several major characters. Foremost is Anthony Rubin, a high-school hockey star and a hopeful romantic who believes he’ll somehow liberate sexpot Juliette Dimiglio (daughter of a “minor gangster” besieged by loan sharks) from her oafish boyfriend, and reconcile his adulterous father Michael and unstable mother Jess (who abandons her family and moves to Florida). Reiken moves skillfully among these lives, and others (including those of Anthony’s unillusioned older sister Dani[elle]; his former best friend Jay, the son of Michael’s married mistress; and Michael’s widowed father Max, in love again in his late 80s), creating multiple centers of interest that we visit again and again, in present time (during Anthony’s visit to his mother, three years after her flight south) and in lengthy action-filled flashbacks. Outcroppings of both shockingly sudden violence (a suicide, two savage beatings) and slow inexorable decline (the anorexic resignation of a roommate with whom Anthony bonds when he’s hospitalized for knee surgery, the increasing distance Jess keeps from even those she loves most) are subtly juxtaposed with quietly wrenching, oddly offbeat lyrical moments (Michael’s hilarious invention of “the Yiddish constellations” for his stargazing family; Anthony and Dani impulsively bike-riding through Livingston’s deserted streets in the middle of the night). Such seductive mysteries cohere in Anthony’s mind as “legends” that will simultaneously enrich him and—as the bittersweet conclusion shows—quietly break his heart.
Young as he is, Reiken knows the territory of emotional commitment and confusion as well as anybody writing today. Beautiful stuff.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-100507-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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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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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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