This debut novel by Brooklynite Tanner about the inarticulateness of young love was preempted at the Frankfurt Book Fair,...
A pair of young Russian immigrants, each desperately infatuated with the other, are parted and reunited in Brighton Beach.
This debut novel by Brooklynite Tanner about the inarticulateness of young love was preempted at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and rightly so. The author captures the subculture of the Russian émigré subculture in New York with verve and realism but infuses her two leads with such innocence and zeal that they become impossibly charismatic by the story’s end. The book opens on 10-year-old Vaclav, a charismatic lad whose hero and role model is Harry Houdini. His other half is Lena, a shy waif of a girl whose struggle to learn English and lack of family has left her marooned in a strange land. For Vaclav, things just are. “One day being a famous magician,” and “Lena being lovely assistant,” are eventualities. In Lena, Tanner captures so well the captivity of English as a second language. “So even though Lena is a very loud person on the inside, and very funny and smart, and sings songs and thinks big, loud thoughts, on the outside she seems quiet and shy,” she writes. Their life together seems meant to be. But when Vaclav’s mother Rasia discovers a terrible violation by Lena’s guardians, the girl is sent into the depths of Protective Services, where she’s lost for seven years. Vaclav whispers goodnight to Lena every night, while Lena keeps her affection for Vaclav locked away along with all the other secrets she keeps so close. Once reunited, they ask those terrible questions: “Did you remember me? Was I as important to you as you were to me? Was I alone in my remembering? Or were you with me the whole time?” These two graceful creatures must find some space between all their secrets in order to find happiness, alone or apart.Pub Date: May 31, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6931-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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