Jason laments that "there is nothing so false or stupid as the idea of the second chance, the fresh start." Yet Swan keeps...
The five stories in Swan's fourth collection (Of Memory and Desire, 1989, etc.) stay with familiar yet satisfying material: hopelessly stifled lives adrift in the American Southwest.
In "Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn," the Lerner family—father Nathan, mother Reba, and daughter Rachel—have moved from their home in Delaware to a mining town in New Mexico to manage a furniture store. The town is "high in the mountains . . . up for grabs by mud and dust," and the promise of happiness and prosperity ends almost immediately when Nathan discovers that one of the store's long-time employees, Max Becker, is stealing from the business. Owner Sam Goldman, however, won't fire Max unless Nathan can prove the charge. By the time he can, Rachel has grown from an acquiescent girl to an inquisitive young woman. From local hairdresser Suzie Lightfoot she learns not only the facts of life but the additional fact that there's more to the world than this miserable little town. Swan explores the desire to escape in other pieces as well. In "Sloan's Daughter," middle-aged banker Tom Sloan is trapped between his daughter's reckless life and his powerful father's reputation. "News from the Volcano" examines a single long night in the life of a waitress named Lupe, deposited by fate at a little cafe in the desert. "The Chasm"—the only disappointment here—chronicles the slow, hard lives of the region's cattle ranchers. Finally, in "Backtracking," wanderer Jason Hummer is forced home to Salida, Colorado, when his mother dies and leaves him her small house.
Jason laments that "there is nothing so false or stupid as the idea of the second chance, the fresh start." Yet Swan keeps the men and women in her sensuous, bittersweet stories dreaming and reaching, in the very best traditions of American storytelling.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8262-1296-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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