Idolaters will enjoy glimpses of the star and Sobin’s suitable lushness of word and image, while others may wish for a...
As in The Fly-Truffler (2000), Sobin follows a character striving obsessively—against time and age—to find or capture some essence in his life before it’s too late. This time around, though, contrivance outweighs the compelling.
Philip Nilson is a scriptwriter who, when diagnosed with bone cancer and given three months to live, chooses to immerse himself in one last screenplay—a task that will presumably provide him with some kind of answer about his own life. And so he sets out on the unlikely project of writing about Garbo—to find out what it was that really happened, in 1924, that brought about the actress’s as-if-overnight flowering into the extraordinary beauty who was to capture the world. Delving into research, Nilson believes the answer lies in a late 1924 trip Garbo took to Istanbul (then Constantinople) with Mauritz Stiller, her director and the man who discovered, molded, and created her. Stiller (it’s now 1998) is long-dead, but Nilson follows a lead to Switzerland, where he meets with the sole witness of the Istanbul filming, a lighting man now in his 90s—and what this man lets Nilson know, reluctantly at first, explains much indeed. But the result, however interesting, doesn’t do much to lift the drama. Trying for a kind of Death in Venice quality of breathlessness fraught with significance, Sobin turns up the heat by creating parallels between Nilson’s early sexual life and Mauritz Stiller’s (both, it turns out, have this mother thing). And, unfortunately, the precious trumps the passionate as Nilson, staying in a classy Swiss hotel to finish his script, fills himself with morphine to stay his cancer pain (a decaying bone in his hand even breaks, from the pressure of the pen) but has appetite aplenty to enjoy his elegant dining each evening.
Idolaters will enjoy glimpses of the star and Sobin’s suitable lushness of word and image, while others may wish for a breath of fresh air.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-04204-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
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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