A put-upon teenager runs away from home and winds up traveling the world, living a rock ’n’ roll fantasy in Williams' debut novel.
It takes Frederick Mathews exactly one week to start a new school, get into trouble and find himself homeless. Setting the tone for the rest of the book, an unaffected Frederick spends exactly one night on the streets before stumbling into a band’s practice space and, almost immediately, becoming their new bassist. Despite being sent out on the streets to sell drugs in order to fund the band, Frederick thinks he’s got it made—until he comes face-to-face with the bandleader’s ego during an extended engagement in Japan. The newly christened Fred Noize takes mere minutes to become the force behind a new band, Mangled Noize, whose setbacks and struggles don’t affect Fred in the least. That’s the shame of this book because Fred and Mangled Noize face some real difficulties: being stranded in a country where they can’t speak the language, radio stations in the United States won’t play their songs, a conniving woman thinks getting pregnant by Fred is her lifelong gravy train, encounters with heroin, the requisite hard drinking, and the pain of realizing that six years later, you’re unrecognizable to your own sister. Plum opportunities to build reader empathy through characterization are regrettably ignored. Instead, the book reads like rock star propaganda: the worst part of touring is a smelly tour bus bathroom, the girls are all perfect—and perfectly willing—and on-tour downtime can be spent exploring the city you’re in. This latter reveals one of author Williams’ weaknesses—many details of the rock ’n’ roll life add to the feel of fantasy while detracting from the book’s credibility. Overpopulated with secondary characters whose presence adds color but not depth, Fred’s adventures are told more than shown, a detriment to what could otherwise have been a very real, poignant tale of a young man who never lets the bad get him down.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463757199
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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