A worm’s-eye fable of how Machiavellian General Douglas MacArthur, having won the war in the Pacific, goes on to wage peace against his subtle former adversaries. When V-J Day catapults MacArthur from five-star general to Supreme Commander of Occupied Japan, the old fox reacts as if he’s spent his entire life preparing for this chance. Laying siege to the princes and diplomats whose country his forces have so recently been bombing, MacArthur craftily wangles his way into a position of unprecedented power and prestige. The general sees his calling as a high one: to prepare the way to an orderly peacetime economy and culture for the conquered nation, to bring war criminals to speedy justice, and to urge a democratic constitution on a country whose dynastic history stretches back thousands of years. Yet his private prejudices and grievances, dispassionately recalled by his aide-de-camp, Captain Jay Marsh, sway his every plan, first obliquely and then ever more directly, as he vows to protect Emperor Hirohito’s family from prosecution because he needs an intact monarchy to sponsor his reforms, and as he prosecutes honorable, innocent General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, for the 1937 rape of Nanking in order to shield perpetrators he can—t afford to accuse. MacArthur’s visionary flaws are echoed in a minor key by Jay, who, like his boss, compromises his romance with a beautiful Filipina at the Army’s behest, and—encouraged by the example of an exasperated prosecutor who manipulates MacArthur into dismissing him from the judge advocate’s staff and shipping him back stateside—ends up gambling his principles and future on an attempt to outmaneuver the wily general. Despite a lumbering opening and some plummy prose, Webb (Something to Die For, 1991, etc.) makes winning the Japanese peace look every bit as challenging and tragic as winning the war. (film rights to Scott Rudin/Paramount; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $150,000 ad/promo budget; author tour)
Pub Date: April 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-7679-0076-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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
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
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