by Henry Alley ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A knotty, lyrical, but sometimes overdone tale about a gay vet’s recovery.
A gay Vietnam veteran’s buried trauma provokes much turmoil in this novel.
It’s 1986, and Robb Jorgenson, a 40-year-old Seattle biology professor, has a terrible secret. It’s not his gay sexuality: He is semi-out and has a relationship with Bart, a high school drama teacher. His problem is his experience in the Vietnam War, the memory of which is causing nightmares and insomnia, an Ativan habit, and a persistent sense that he “really didn’t feel he existed at all.” Robb’s anguish leads readers to expect a war crime in his past, but that’s not quite the case: While serving as a military clerk in Saigon, he was a passenger in a jeep that had a hit-and-run collision with a female bicyclist. It’s not clear whether the woman was injured or which vehicle was at fault, but he feels guilt-stricken for not reporting the driver, Mason, for leaving the scene. Compounding his unease is Mason’s hotness—“that tan, that back, those pectorals glimpsed in the windshield, bright with sun”—which leads to a sexual encounter that gets curtailed when he upbraids the man for the accident. My Lai it’s not, but the incident gives Robb panic attacks that get him discharged. Years later, it provokes hallucinations of flaming bicycle wheels, spiraling addiction, paranoia, suicide plans, and finally rehab. Robb’s breakdown draws in loved ones dealing with their own issues. His sister, Olivia, also in recovery, tries to stabilize him while her marriage to a psychiatrist frays. Bart is coming out to his own family and confronting his mother’s projection of her homophobia onto his father. Alley (The Dahlia Field, 2017, etc.) is a skillful writer who draws realistic characters and crafts well-turned comic vignettes—a grandmotherly nurse gives Bart an overly explicit safe sex tutorial—along with moving scenes of the gathering AIDS epidemic. There’s a psychological frankness to the novel, with many pointed discussions as characters internalize the lesson that they must take responsibility for their own lives. Counterpoised to that realism is a giddy sexual lyricism. Robb swoons over studs, from the “tanned runner…his blonde hair radiant as a sunflower” to “that god…in the black lycra tights, his butt almost busting.” Odes to the healing power of man-on-man touching blossom throughout. A massage that Robb receives from a handsome physical therapist sparks a Proustian sensual epiphany, as he finds “himself entering into Tyler’s very bone and sinew, as though their bodies were fusing, the anguish seeming to be like a flower, opening like a bud…with his brain instantly shooting itself back into the backyard of a childhood friend; the friend and his sister were wading with him in a little pond, below a rockery of heather and carnations.” Unfortunately, Robb is not a captivating focus for the book’s lubricious energy. He’s a morose, self-absorbed, ruminative man whose depression and PTSD feel unearned and whose recovery, complete with a brief turn away from gay sexuality that is dropped before it gets interesting, seems perfunctory. Readers may wish that Bart would dump him and take up with one of the more intriguing characters in this hit-and-miss story.
A knotty, lyrical, but sometimes overdone tale about a gay vet’s recovery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-937627-35-5
Page Count: 297
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Henry Alley
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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