Reuss has given us a fascinating novel about interesting people who become fully formed in his writing, but the story never...
A middle-aged woman traces her father’s past on foot, by car, and from the sky as she uses her ability to fly.
Reuss begins his novel with a lovely bit of magic realism—an 8-year-old girl moving out of the flight path of a jetliner over New Jersey. The night landscape is below her, and “she could see herself in the distance, soaring, overtaking the woman she would become in the decades ahead.” That girl, now a divorced woman, Maisie, begins a journey through the pine barrens of her youth, reconnecting with the land and with her late father, Alden, and learning about the past from her father's cousin Sally—a wonderful character, quirky and comfortable. Sally remembers infinite details of people and places, time and space, but she has dementia and can't remember the previous day. Maisie is on a quest to discover her father, who was shunned by his in-laws after his wife’s death since he was a free-spirited artist certainly not able to raise their grandchild as only they could. His art is deeply connected to its place; he reworks the landscape in grand visions of ancient ruins and modern life. Maisie spent the summer she was 8 with him at Sally’s home in the woods, but her father disappears for good after losing his art in a fire. Forty-five years later, Maisie is contacted by Sally, who tells her that her father has died in Mexico, which initiates Maisie's search for his past in what's left of the forest. Reuss’ words are elegant, beautiful at times, creating a labyrinth of time, and his characterization is truly wonderful. But the book never comes together. Alden’s landscape art is an intellectual dead end for the reader, and the sense of family through place that Maisie longs for does not materialize, except from the air, real or not.
Reuss has given us a fascinating novel about interesting people who become fully formed in his writing, but the story never quite does.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60953-128-7
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
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
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