A big new novel by James Baldwin is always of major interest, and there are scenes here of Baldwin at his earthy, lyrical best. But this rambling book lacks overall shape, and Baldwin seems self-consciously intent on sour lip-chewing, on talking around and beyond white readers: to see him crumpling into jive-and-slap insularity is dismaying, he whose anger isn't by nature clogged and stingy but churchly, prophetic, and outcast. The chief narrative here belongs to Arthur Montana, the "Soul Emperor," a famous black gospel singer done-in finally by the combined injuries of being good of heart, black, musical, and homosexual; but the book is really a troika of three barely-yoked-together themes, all of which Baldwin has done better by before. Baldwin-the-exile writes as brilliantly as ever about how it was and is: touring the South in the Fifties, going into a bar or a store if you're black. There is the portrait of Sister Julia, a child preacher (as Baldwin was), her calling ended at the hands of her brutalizing father, then her placeless wandering as a black, childless woman in a white world. And the love scenes, as usual with Baldwin, are maudlin, but Arthur's first love affair with one of his back-up singers, Crunch, is very moving and deftly done. Wonderful, too, are the church concerts, the singing and testifying—but the sermonizing that precedes or follows them dispirits. Baldwin seems to have lost his way fictionally; he presses doggedly on here, but the path never clarifies. Bathos aplenty, anger folded-down too minutely, energy frittered—a book that seems to have imploded along the way.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0385334567
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
APPRECIATIONS
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