BEFORE SUMMER

Name: BEFORE SUMMER
Author: H. Arlo Nimmo
ISBN: 978-1493637614

by H. Arlo Nimmo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2013

A somewhat uneven collection that showcases the author’s keen eye for cultural detail and his affection for his characters.

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In 16 short stories linked by a single narrator, Nimmo (Pele, Volcano Goddess of Hawai’i, 2011, etc.) sketches the world of a gay Iowa farm boy in the 1940s and ’50s.

Lachlan MacLennan is the fourth generation of his Scottish family to live in Tools Rock, a small farming town in central Iowa. The residents notice but tolerate one another’s eccentricities, including a communitywide obsession with the weather, and most people follow paths very similar to their parents’. But times are changing; Lach’s cousin Letha, a young woman, eschews marriage and leaves town to attend college in Chicago, and young Lach can foresee a life for himself far away from Tools Rock. As a child, he escapes Iowa for upstate New York when his father is hired to work in a wartime defense job and the family moves to an Army base. (Lach charmingly begins one story: “I always felt a little guilty because I had so much fun during World War II.”) After the war ends, the MacLennans return home, to Lach’s great disappointment: “No movies. No soldiers. No river. No army base. Nothing but cornfields. And all the people looked alike.” He acclimates himself again to Tools Rock, but he never really fits in. At an early age, he senses that he doesn’t share the attraction to girls that other boys have. His attempts to explore his own sexuality include repeatedly viewing explicit photographs that he discovered in his friend’s parents’ closet and, in college, making very awkward overtures to men who advertise on bathroom walls. However, as Nimmo portrays it here, growing up intellectually gifted and gay in a 1950s Iowa farm town isn’t very stressful for Lach. His very conventional family and friends accept him, and he manages to emerge unscathed into adulthood, ready to form mature relationships with other men. Some readers might construe this outcome as unrealistic. The prose style matches the personalities of the plainspoken Midwesterners (“Tools Rock had its share of strange people. Some were downright weird”), but readers might have welcomed more drama throughout.

A somewhat uneven collection that showcases the author’s keen eye for cultural detail and his affection for his characters.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2013

ISBN: 978-1493637614

Page Count: 210

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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.