An epic novel that traces the lives of three generations of an English family as Sorel-Cameron (Mag, 1990) slowly transforms his writing style to match the times depicted. Lionel Drewer is a captain in the British Army at the book's start. He falls in love with the wealthy Anna Brand; their love is strained at first because of the demands of the soldier's life. However, physical and psychological intimacy drive them to marry, and soon they have a son, Lewis. After fighting in WW I, Lionel suffers a nervous breakdown, which distances him from his son. Lewis will squirm through adolescence to marry Celia Bratley, the daughter of a moderately wealthy factory owner. Sex gradually blots out the love in their relationship, while, conversely, love has come to dwarf sex in the marriage of Lionel and Anna. Lewis and Celia have a son named Henry, who matures during the '60s and marries Bel, a black drifter addicted to sex, drugs, and personal freedoms. The middle-class suburban Henry's struggle to maintain a relationship with Bel characterizes the slide towards despair that dominates the plot of this book. Readers will gradually realize that only love can blind these characters to the world's storm of pleasure and misery. The author, after all, swirls visions of war together with countless erotic passages—which become deathlike when lovers' orgasms make them feel empty and spent. The work's stylistic leaps, however, obscure its mordant tone. By the book's end, his characters' dialogue has traveled from stiff, 19th-century politeness to the attitude-laced speech of the '60s; likewise, his writing style has changed from flowery prose to a mixture of surrealism, stream-of-consciousness, and realism. Its scope and display of novelistic ability make Storm-Blind a considerable accomplishment.
Pub Date: May 15, 1994
ISBN: 1-85619-185-0
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Sinclair-Stevenson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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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