Falconer moves with an electrifying sense of the inexorable, from lightweight satire to the steadily deepening terror that...
A hot London summer brings three teenagers into a folie à trois of murder and deception.
When school lets out, childhood friends Si and Danny seem to be just a pair of normal kids, their heads filled with action movies, ad copy, inspirational bestsellers, and smoke. They’ve been so close for so long that, as Si guilelessly says, “If it hadn’t been for AIDS, we would’ve been blood brothers.” But that’s before they meet the bewitching, bewildering Eleanor, a forthright 15-year-old who wastes no time asking whether Si wants to have sex with her and whether he’s interested in taking a Mediterranean cruise with her and her charming but vaguely sinister uncle Richard. And it’s before Si’s mother’s pregnancy brings Andy, her feckless vanished lover, back to her side to administer an unofficial but timely dose of pethidine to ease her labor, and before Danny’s mother’s pregnancy earns her another beating from the drug supplier (and father-to-be) the boys call Shortarse. Fearing that her abusive lover’s next assault will leave his drug-dependent mother dead, Danny announces his intention of killing him, and he’s encouraged in his plan to destroy the bogeyman who might well turn into as big a monster as “that Hitler guy” by the intrepid Eleanor, who after a long, spine-tingling seduction of both boys to very different ends, accompanies them to Shortarse’s lair. Danny’s murderous plot, like so much else in this firecracker debut, doesn’t exactly come off as expected, however, leaving Si to come to painful terms with his role in the problems it unleashes—and in the still more agonizing problems his friendship with Eleanor, in an uncannily intricate parallel, is about to unleash as well.
Falconer moves with an electrifying sense of the inexorable, from lightweight satire to the steadily deepening terror that life-or-death decisions cast over kids of every age.Pub Date: March 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-89255-255-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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