There’s more chaff than wheat in this uneven book.
A collection of 15 short and rough-edged stories, first published in the U.K.
The contributing writers were asked to pen stories that would make good travel reading. The editor favors first-person narrators, some of whom just want to vent. There’s the female attendant in an underground restroom (“In Attendance,” by Paula Rawsthorne), who, after losing home and husband, lives illegally in a supply closet; the tale’s grimness feels self-indulgent. Almost as grim but much more lively is the Asian-British cab driver’s situation in M.Y. Alam’s “Taxi Driver”; he’s working in a part of Yorkshire unsettled by the arrest of terror suspects. The young widow in Tania Hershman’s “On a Roll,” rather than bemoaning her fate, actually has a story to tell, and it’s a good one, about a dream on a transatlantic flight and its outcome in a Vegas casino. Another engaging story, the cream of the crop, is Sophie Hannah’s “Always Swing Upright.” Sonia is traveling by train to give a lecture on happiness; her eventful journey will reveal that, for her, the greatest rush comes from an act of pure folly. Far less successful are the portraits of a lesbian, consumed by airport angst, waiting for the return of her lover (“Missing You,” by Rosa Ainley), and the addled museum ticket clerk with a whimsical project (“Aubrey,” by Alexis Clements). The third-person narratives don’t fare well either. The meeting between biological father and the son he gave up for adoption in “Side Exit,” by Daithidh MacEochaidh, is too heavy-handed, as is Nathan Ramsden’s “The Categories of Ernest Bookbinder,” about a man headed for the asylum. The husband and wife whose marriage is breaking up in Penny Aldred’s “It’s a Hard Rain,” meanwhile, are too generic. Hats off, though, to Anthony Cropper; his very short “Love of Fate,” almost all dialogue, is a perfect snapshot of a small boy and one of his mother’s lovers enjoying each other’s company.
There’s more chaff than wheat in this uneven book.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-901927-28-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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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