by Gabriel Roth ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2013
The messy story of a guy neither bad enough to be evil, nor good enough for redemption.
A dot-com millionaire with an analytical mind and crippled maturity clumsily negotiates the minefields of adult relationships.
Whether you blame Nick Hornby, Junot Díaz or Tom Perrotta, they’ve collectively inspired a rash of novels whose main characters are dyed-in-the-wool SOBs. Such is the case with this earnestly written portrait of a cad by debut novelist Roth. It may also say something that the novel starts with a badly timed, Ecstasy-inspired romp and ends in a strip club. Our nominal hero is Eric Muller, a tense, gifted programmer who hit it big with a bit of popular software. He has the serious hots for Maya Marcom, a journalist who’s just old enough not to buy into Eric’s bullshit moves. Threaded through the story are flashbacks to Eric’s childhood, complete with an embarrassing adolescent incident in which his journal, marking observations about his female classmates, fell into enemy hands. Less embarrassing and more painful is Maya’s stern confession that her father, Donald, molested her regularly as a child. But something strikes Eric as odd about her story, and he tracks down her father in California to hear both sides of the forlorn tale. His obsession with her clearly painful past leads to a showdown over the veracity of memory and the fragility of loyalty. Roth tries to mitigate some of Maya’s angst with a weak subplot about Eric’s entrepreneurial father and his get-rich-quick schemes, but it never quite gels. Eric is also something of a philosopher without a philosophy, which leads to lines like this one: “We hang here long enough to etch the moment onto the surfaces of our brains, so that in every one of the infinite possible futures we will each be able to remember exactly what the other looked like in the moment right before we started kissing, when we had no inkling of the world of trouble to come.” No pressure or anything.
The messy story of a guy neither bad enough to be evil, nor good enough for redemption.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22328-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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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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