AIDS horror fantasy by Laws, who died at 34, of an AIDS- related illness, a week after completing final changes on the manuscript. Laws ties together three stories here. The main one, the bulk of the book, has a knockout premise that he follows through neatly as part of the horror genre. But it's a premise that could have gone in a stronger direction, that of straight drama rather than melodrama, to greater effect. In San Francisco, Jimmy Jiggers, called ``Jiggs,'' inherits money from his late parents' insurance and moves with his deaf lover Luke to a cozy cottage at Lands End. Then a beautiful white Cadillac limousine from the house across the street hits Luke, who is hospitalized. While he's alone in the cottage, Jiggs is shocked by strange events, especially a grisly corpse that rises from a grave and tells him the novel's main story—a story that begins with Sam, a gay garage mechanic hired to fix the white limo, who is seduced by the limo's chauffeur, Joe. When Sam and Joe are interrupted by Joe's employer, Sam gets killed and his astral body floats above the other two men, then gets absorbed into the haunted limo. Next comes the story of Brent, who has ``the Look.'' Overbundled, he still looks grotesquely thin, which is the wrong look. But he meets a Mephistophelean figure, a lover who once had AIDS but now radiates health. ``I'd kill to have my looks back!'' Brent cries, and, lo, a man sells him the same drink that resurrected his old lover and brings on the right Look: superhealth. But Brent must do dirty deeds for more of the drink, whose formula involved the blood of innocent children. Innocence is the drink. Slowly, the tale veers into conventional melodrama, not into Faust or Death in Venice. Given the genre, a good read—and the themes based on gay love and AIDS add an undercurrent of real feeling.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55583-217-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Alyson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
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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