The outcome is as ambrosial as the story itself. Now if only we knew what happens with Ethan and Louisianne.
A baseball story as sweet and heart-gladdening as the juice from a ripe peach, by highly regarded Vermont novelist and memoirist Mosher (The True Account, 2003, etc.).
Ethan Allen, the contemporary version, hails from northern Vermont, just like his namesake. His hometown is Kingdom Common, complete with IGA and five-and-dime, hill farmers on the skids and dark hollows, stoop-sitting pensioners, nail-tough retired schoolteachers still happy to dish unsolicited advice, a company of improbable graybeards, and a statue of the late great Revolutionary War colonel who communes with our Ethan, tendering suggestions here, a fresh perspective there. So a bit of magic is afoot, but there’s also Ethan’s hard-knocks childhood: a mother and grandmother long on their own patented brand of love though short on wherewithal; and the neighbors, who possess even more malice, and of the physical sort, than his grandmother. Ethan’s knack with a baseball lifts him above dread and circumstance, though not without encouragement and support from his nearest, including that brought by the return of his understandably absent father, Teddy. Mosher’s talent for giving believable breath to unconventional lives (at one point, Ethan’s mother does a topless river dance on the despised neighbor’s bulldozer) is on full display, with the most outlandish or suspect behavior given a natural rhythm that’s easy to accept, where the offensive and the insightful come wrapped in the same parcel. There are words to the wise—in Mosher’s hands they feel burnished, not timeworn—about patience, concentration, and smartness. And the statue says: “Mark my words. With talent comes a high price. Self-discipline. Setbacks. Sacrifice. Risk of failing. If you aren’t willing to pay that price, you don’t have a snowball’s chance.”
The outcome is as ambrosial as the story itself. Now if only we knew what happens with Ethan and Louisianne.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-19722-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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