A nice portrait, but little more: a sensitive and well-thought-out story that, in the end, tends toward the slight and...
Fairly thin first novel about a young man’s devotion to his grandfather and their mutual love of baseball.
Boys nowadays may not gravitate to baseball as automatically as they once did, but young Stephen Slack has the bug bad—and he probably caught it from his grandpa Lazo, who was a true fanatic of the game in a time when that meant something. The son of Polish immigrants, Lazo grew up in a hardworking Toronto family that had little time for idle distractions, but in 1914 young Lazo went with his father to see the Toronto Maple Leafs host the Providence Grays: a Red Sox farm team with a rookie pitcher named Babe Ruth on its roster. The boy was hooked for life, especially after Ruth hit a home run (his first as a professional) that soared out of the field and sank into the waters of the bay beyond. It was a moment that would stay in Lazo’s mind forever, even more after he himself hit a home run in a school championship game that cleared the fence and fell into a swimming pool. To his grandson Stephen, Lazo is a hero, a survivor of another age who flatters the boy by paying him more attention than his own (highly successful) parents do; to Lazo, Stephen is a comforting friend who doesn’t (like his own son) look down on him as a hapless ne’er-do-well. When Lazo falls ill with a brain tumor, he recalls Babe Ruth’s first home run and asks Stephen in his delirium to retrieve the ball from the bottom of the bay. As a quest, this doesn’t rank with the search for the Holy Grail, but it follows the same basic pattern, and it becomes the organizing point of the tale, which offers a moving elegy given by youth to age.
A nice portrait, but little more: a sensitive and well-thought-out story that, in the end, tends toward the slight and flimsy.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-31759-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
