First-novelist and purported recluse and drifter Collignon spins a darkly modern version of ``Beauty and the Beast'' in which an iconoclastic California girl befriends a reclusive writer who believes he is too hideously deformed to be seen—her affection leading him to discover in a ragtag finale that he has been a prisoner of his own fear and self-loathing. ``Alovar, exiled to the wastelands by the sheer perfection of his form, wandered the ravaged lands, helping those he could and showing mercy to those he couldn't.'' Sensitive young Eddie created this science-fictional warrior and his bleak epic while living in a rough cabin in the Idaho Rockies. Over the years, despite Alovar's growing fame, Eddie continues to huddle on his mountaintop, unseen by any human except his hobbled old mother, who more or less regularly drags up a wagon filled with Oreos and cigarettes and cooked chickens. Like the aristocratic Alovar, Eddie never questions his exile. He was born so deformed, so animal-like, that his own father cursed him as an abomination. At moments, overcome by the need to howl and run on all fours through the forest, Eddie fears he has become the monster his father thought he was. Then young Katherine appears at his doorstep with the groceries, sent by his mother because her leg is too lame to make the climb. An idealistic kid with dyed-orange hair, ``Kat'' talks to Eddie through the closed cabin door. Day by day, she visits until Eddie falls in love, blossoming with a newfound feeling of humanity. Too quickly, his fragile world unravels when gun-toting townspeople follow Kat to the mountain—but not before he risks showing himself and learns that he has been in a prison of his own making. An obviously talented Collignon makes an intriguing debut, committing some of the typical first-novel sins: awkward pacing, sketchy supporting characters, and a self-conscious, too-abrupt ending.
Pub Date: April 28, 1992
ISBN: 0-939149-65-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
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