of creative life behind the former Iron Curtain.
A suspenseful expedition into the sad, complicated world of 1970s Soviet writers, who apparently spent more time
concealing their work to avoid KGB arrest than banging away at typewriters, borrows authenticity and weight from the author’s own seven-year imprisonment for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" (the 1988 memoir Grey is the Color of Hope). A well-known Soviet author dies, leaving behind a completed anti-Soviet manuscript. Ordered to recover the missing samizdat—subversive literature—KGB agent Viktor Stepnych trawls through the lives of Muscovite writers who might be hiding it. His undercover search settles on two main suspects: the reclusive, cat-loving widower Anton Nikolin, children’s author and colleague of the deceased; and young Dima Koretsky, a poet under suspicion ever since a friend’s ambiguous warning to "be careful" was recorded by KGB bugs. Stepnych finds the missing samizdat early in the story, but not before he stumbles on further subversive writings: Nikolin’s lifework, a full-length novel, whose authorship could cost him his life. Stepnych now completely changes direction, mobilizing a network of reluctant informers to trap Nikolin, who is eventually snared and forced to choose between "psychiatric treatment" and going to work for the KGB. This somewhat disorienting about-face in the narrative is compensated for by often charming characterizations of Stepnych’s reluctant informers: a writer, for example, who’s been in the KGB’s grasp since signing an anti-Soviet petition, or a veteran still singing war songs with his WWII comrades. Ratushinskaya’s sympathetic depiction of her characters’ struggles between right and wrong, and between self-respect and familysafety, makes her story a compelling and ultimately hopeful study of people’s actions under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Charm carries Ratushinskaya’s debut fiction over its structural hurdles, allowing a look into the challenges and paradoxes
of creative life behind the former Iron Curtain.Pub Date: March 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-7195-5685-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: John Murray Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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