A promising first collection of nine stories about men full of Weltschmerz and tangled up by affairs of the head; Shapiro's sardonic delivery is leavened by a black humor reminiscent of Bruce Jay Friedman. In the title story, Altshuler, an affluent shoe-designer, takes in his uncle Phil (``the dumb yutz''), who visits after being left by his wife of 42 years. Phil is a classic overeater and finally dies, but not before Altshuler learns one of life's lessons about forbearance and generosity. ``The Marine Mammal Guy,'' about a man who leaves his girlfriend in New Jersey to take a job as the ``Ape House promo whiz'' for the San Francisco Zoo, only to lose both girl and job before picking himself up from the floor, is vintage Friedman absurdism. ``After Hope'' is a meditation by a writer/narrator who settled for less than his early promise, but who remembers his salad days in the presence of Minnesota writer Thayer Hayes, who disappears in 1977, thereby fueling rumor and speculation. ``At the Wall'' is a powerful portrait of a shallow man, a tourist, who visits the Vietnam Memorial and faces his guilt in the form of a black man with no money for a bus home. ``Golders Green'' follows one Ted Lustig to London. A mediocre scholar who ostensibly researches Coleridge but secretively reads and empathizes with von Kleist, a young suicide victim who was ``still possessed of the knowledge that truth was knowable,'' Lustig comes to understand, though ambiguously, ``the connectedness of things....'' Some of these stories appeared in the Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, and other literary magazines. Mostly, Shapiro redeems his characters' angst without simplifying their predicaments or simplifying experience.
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8262-0863-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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