An eclectic, bittersweet group of nine stories—Hannah's second book of fiction (Desperate Measures, 1988—not reviewed)- -mostly concerning lonesome men in exile who struggle desperately for human connection or who write off humankind. In the powerful title story, Charles is lost but comes upon a rural farmhouse where he is saved (imagine Welty's ``Death of a Traveling Salesman'' with an upbeat ending); and in deftly done and touching ``Interstate,'' Henry is traveling cross-country with his six-year-old daughter, Maggie, whose soda-pop-fueled premonition (``I think something really bad is going to happen to us'') turns out, come morning, to be a false alarm. ``Residue'' is a Paul Bowles-flavored story about a man working in an Asian desert and saving money but losing his soul in a place of ``hardships but no dangers.'' ``Backyards'' is about a man who stays for a month in his brother's house; the piece first takes a voyeuristic turn, then turns absurd. ``Gypsy Moth'' tries—mostly successfully—to get into the mind of a serial killer, while ``Rising Water, Wind-Driven Rain''—set in the 17th, 20th, and 2lst centuries—gets stretched too thin and turns tedious. Some of these were first published in magazines like The Kansas Quarterly and The South Carolina Review. Hannah's plots are uneven, but his ear for mood and tone is nearly unerring—and the collection, for that reason, has a cumulative power that the individual stories don't have on their own.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8262-0900-9
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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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