by G.W. Hawkes ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1998
This intriguing story of two dropouts from the “normal” world is the first half of a two-novel debut (followed by Semaphore in August) by the author of the story collections Spies in the Blue Smoke (1992) and Playing Out of the Deep Woods (1995, not reviewed). Hawkes’s protagonists are Paul Merline (who narrates) and John Suope, friends since 1952 when John, a US soldier serving in Korea (where he lost a leg), is treated by Paul, then a medic. After the war, the two drifted together and accepted employment by a secretive “Foundation” that sent them to the New Mexico desert to “map” remote land areas for purposes that will never be revealed to them. The story’s major actions occur in 1987, when the insular little world Paul and John have built for themselves is threatened. A young woman graduate student, Caliope Jones, camps out nearby, planning to build (literally) a town, then film its destruction by flood, for her doctoral dissertation project. —Dinosaur men— settle in for extensive archaeological excavations. And John announces that he’s met a woman and intends to live with her. Hawkes creates absorbing drama out of Paul’s mingled disorientation, reawakened sexuality, amusement, and outrage in a perfectly calculated narrative filled with snaky plot twists, rough humor (— . . . we could buy New Mexico and kick everybody out—), and an almost awestruck feel for the endangered integrity of beloved objects and places—physical presences that mean more to the surveyors than any people do: a “monkey-puzzle” tree, a “crash piece” that may be a UFO, a lowering elevation the two friends name the Tooth of Time. The novel is further distinguished by precise, sensuous prose and superbly compact descriptions, notably of landscape (an excursion by raft through a huge underground cavern located beneath a mountain range is especially compelling). The Orwellian enigma of “the Foundation” is more distraction than plot essential, but it’s the only real misstep in a highly accomplished debut.
Pub Date: July 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-878448-81-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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