Czech writer and former dissident Kl°ma (My Golden Trades, 1994, etc.) eloquently limns the troubling dilemma of a life set free too late. Like so many of his contemporaries behind the Iron Curtain, talented filmmaker Pavel Fuka, protagonist of this post- revolutionary novel, tried to survive the dark years with his integrity and ambition intact. But, as Kl°ma movingly details, youthful ideals and a sense of one's own creative powers are not enough to withstand a system devised to crush the human spirit. Pavel, who once believed in something, became a man who ``lacked hope, hope that something in life had real meaning.'' Moving between the past and the recent present, Pavel describes the long years he spent working for state-run television. There, as his requests to film conditions in an explosives factory or a psychiatric hospital were routinely denied, he filmed, instead, meaningless ceremonies, meetings, and interviews. He also recalls early ambitions of filmmaking and travel; a failed youthful attempt to escape and subsequent imprisonment; two futile love affairs; and his present dissatisfactions. He dreams of making a great film, one with the same title as the novel, but when the revolution comes Pavel is no less unhappy, as he embarks on remunerative but sleazy enterprises with former colleagues. The changes come too late: Pavel cannot make his long-dreamed-of film, because ``there's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that they'll never give you the chance. The system never allowed you to win, so it saved you from defeat as well.'' A quiet but searing portrait, as powerful as any of Kl°ma's pre-revolutionary novels, of a man and a society irreparably wounded by an oppressive past. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8021-1574-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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
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