A modern-day hunting fable—and US debut for German novelist and journalist Stern—details the degrees of engagement leading to a final confrontation between a long-suffering giant bear and a master of the universe who's busily arranging post-Soviet jump- starts in Eastern Europe economies for the World Bank. As the first step in an inexorable convergence of destinies, the bear reenters the territory from which it had been driven years before, urged on by a desire to revisit its place of origin. Unlike others of its kind that have become accustomed to receiving food from keepers, and that have thereby been set up as easy kills in government-regulated ``hunts,'' the bear, wary of human contact, is deemed an unacceptable threat to the well-ordered system of big- game management. In Germany, meanwhile, the powerful banker Joop is lonely and restless at the top of his profession, and daydreams increasingly about hunting and a former wife—his last real contacts with the pleasure of life; when word comes from a former guide that he could add a bear to his list of trophies, he makes the most of the opportunity. As the guide succeeds in taming the beast, Joop arrives in the country with an economic stimulus package in hand, but he finds himself more repulsed than exhilarated by the prospect of the hunt, as latent environmental sympathies come to the fore and he identifies with his prey. In the end, he does his masculine duty, but the experience leaves him a changed man. A well-crafted allegory exposing the grimness of real-world economics—as well as a vivid tale, with life in the animal kingdom having far more vitality than the dull, narrow realm of human experience.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41782-6
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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
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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