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REDEMPTION

A courtroom drama, courtesy of the tireless civil libertarian and novelist, whose recent home runs include The Trial of Abigail Goodman (1993), about the anti-abortion movement; and An Independent Woman (1997), a sixth-volume wrap-up of the Immigrants series. Seventy-eight-year-old Ike Goldman, a retired Columbia University contract law professor, has been a widower for three years when he saves a 40ish woman from jumping off the George Washington Bridge, takes her home, lets her sleep over, treats her to a fairly fancy dinner the next night, and, despite all reason, quickly finds himself falling in love. As it happens, Elizabeth Hopper is the estranged wife of multimillionaire William Sedgwick Hopper, a Wall Street partner neck-deep in scandal. The story moves along sedately in Fast’s most relaxed style ever, with the author of Citizen Tom Paine and Freedom Road plainly enjoying and indulging himself in this smoked salmon of romantic fantasy, adding plot dollops to keep the reader alert. A depressed artist terrified of her husband, Elizabeth took a part-time job as a shoe clerk right after the annulment came through. She calls herself a battered woman who wants to help other battered women. But is this the whole truth? Within six weeks Ike wants to marry her, and she agrees to his proposal. But then, three days after her acceptance, detectives appear at Ike’s door with a search warrant: William Hopper has been shot to death, and Liz is jailed for the homicide. Subsequently, Ike spends $100,000 hiring a female criminal lawyer to defend his love, who has been indicted on essentially circumstantial evidence. The eponymous redemption will not result from anyone’s change in character, but rather from an event out of left field involving a previously unknown character. Readable, though far from stylish and not as gripping as some of our lawyer novelists. Still, Fast’s followers won—t be disappointed.

Pub Date: July 6, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-100455-2

Page Count: 292

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000

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THE SECRET HISTORY

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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OF MICE AND MEN

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define.  Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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