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DO YOU BELIEVE IN CABEZA DE VACA?

: STORIES

Swan's third collection (Carnival for the Gods, Of Memory and Desire) offers ten stories, mostly set in the Southwest and mostly chronicling varieties of loss. In ``Venus Rising,'' one of the few pieces with a male protagonist, widower Jocoby, a stern narrow man who denied his wife any number of small pleasures, can't bring himself to get rid of her things; Swan subtly and poetically brings him round, through a series of visions of his wife and their life together, to intimations of a more natural way of being ``one might read if only he knew the language.'' In ``The Old Hotel,'' Jack Whedon, his wife Penny, and daughter Jewel live in debt in an old hotel in the desert until two boarders-one a deranged female and the other a teacher retired from France-move in. Jewel, witness to and participant in the ensuing adult complexities, comes of age: ``And she wanted to weep as though she were mourning the deaths of all she had known, something of her own death as well. And what would remain of it for her to remember?'' Swan usually earns such lyricism, though sometimes, as in the title story, about a woman who's ``always had trouble with history,'' evocative juxtapositions-here ranging from history books to pogroms and westward migrations-become a trifle cluttered. Again, though, the lyrical aphoristic finish (``All of us carried so far from the place of our origins'') is just right. Of the remaining stories, ``The Gift'' is about two sisters who travel to Yugoslavia and happen to meet a poet who knows their literature, while his own culture is a cipher to them; and ``Dreaming Crow'' uses a natural mysticism to tell about a woman with a crow that follows her everywhere. Some of these stories were published in The Kenyon Review, Colorado Review and Ohio Review. The best are superb explorations of loss.

Pub Date: April 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-8262-0767-7

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Univ. of Missouri

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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