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WHAT EVER

A LIVING NOVEL

An odd and unaffecting mid-1990s relic that would have been better as a treatise on modern American slang.

Wildly diverse characters muddle their way through 1990s America, for reasons unknown to the reader.

Previously presented as a stage piece in the mid-1990s, this is a mélange of dialogue-driven scenes that purports to be a novel but really comes down to, well, a play in loosely novelistic form. The characters are often ranters—from Violet, the Upper East Side octogenarian, to Bushie, a Hell’s Kitchen whore, to Polly, a white Virginia housewife pursuing an affair with a black man—and none is terribly eloquent or interesting. Violet is a slight exception to this rule, having a brassy broad’s gumption that serves her scenes well, even though she’s often speaking about nothing in particular to one of the people in her life (friend, maid, waiter at the diner where she’s a regular). Among the West Coast characters, the most interesting is Skeeter, a young rave kid who’s hitch-hiking across the country to see various relatives and who’s in love with two raver girls, Sable and Clove. All three are afflicted with egregious California accents (Woodbury, being an accent aficionado, tries to render them as realistically as possible), which gives their scenes a light sprinkling of comedy that relieves (a bit) the tedium of what they do (or don’t do). With her references to the Christian right and certain pop-culture notations (Clove claims to be visited by Cobain the Friendly Ghost after seemingly attempting to drown herself in the ocean), not to mention her fixation on getting every character’s manner of speaking down just right, Woodbury seems to be attempting to chronicle a slice of Americana, circa 1994–95. Likely it would all have been more enthralling on stage, listening to the different slang and hearing all the regional dialect variations, but on the page it just lies there, motionless and without drama.

An odd and unaffecting mid-1990s relic that would have been better as a treatise on modern American slang.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-571-21172-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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