This time out, Swift (Out of This World, Waterland, Learning to Swim, etc.) at first seems to be reworking a fictional convention that's becoming tired from overuse: the writer—or, as here, the Oxford academic—who finds himself in possession of an old manuscript whose revelations dovetail with the perturbations of the modern interpreter. Bill Unwin is the ambivalent don in question, and the journals (bequeathed by family) concern a Victorian ancestor named Matthew Pearce, a surveyor and rector's son-in-law whose life and faith is changed forever when, on the cliffs of Dorset in 1844, he comes face-to-face with an ichthyosaurus. Darwin replaces God in Pearce at that instant—but in Unwin the revelation only sharpens the dilemma of knowing what's better unknown (in his own case, the suicide death of his father), and the questions of immortality and memory and fame and mutability (all very much on his mind since his beloved actress wife Ruth's early cancer death). Unwin has attempted suicide himself but failed, and the vagrant nature of his narration seems an impossible search for focus. Swift is a very cunning writer, though. Every thematic strand- -books, bridges, railroads, dinosaurs, acting, sex—subtly achieves a color that makes it recognizable once the chords of fugue on the theme of mortality and immortality are struck. And feeling (a rare commodity in younger British writers nowadays) is what makes these colors so high: even at its most looping and shuffling, the book finds ways to move you, untricked-up emotion being its surest ground. Unwin's losses are ranged around, but so are the bravery of his questioning memory and the fidelity of his love.
Pub Date: March 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40954-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
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
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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