by Slavenka Drakulić & translated by Marko Ivic ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000
Justly acclaimed as a journalist and an essayist, Drakuli—chose the novel for her latest tale of the terrors of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. While the author’s reputation in the US is largely based on her reporting (Cafe Europa, 1997, etc.), work typically marked by a certain dry, black humor, her fourth novel (after Holograms of Fear, 1992, etc.) is somber, relentlessly bleak, until its disappointingly predictable life-affirming close, which is regrettably rather flat. S., the title character, is a young schoolteacher living and working in a small Bosnian village when the Serbs overrun it in late May 1992. She and all of the town’s women are taken prisoner and removed to a concentration camp, where she’s raped repeatedly by Serb soldiers. When the survivors of this nightmarish experience are exchanged for Serb prisoners, S. finds herself pregnant, goes to Sweden, and gives birth to a boy whose father could be any of the many men who brutalized her. The story opens in the hours after the infant’s delivery, as S. fights against her nurturing instincts toward the child, whom she plans to put up for adoption. This grim account will be familiar to anyone who’s been reading the newspapers in the past decade or who’s dipped into the copious literature of the Holocaust. Sadly, Drakuli— is unable to give voice to S.’s plight in a fashion that doesn't continually remind you of other, better works of this sort. S.’s narrative, in first- as well as third-person, never rises above the clichÇs of the genre, and Drakuli— is ill-served by a translation that is both banal and clumsy. It’s always depressing when a serious book by a gifted author on an important topic is a failure. This one is more painful than most.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89097-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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by Slavenka Drakulić & translated by Christina P. Zoric
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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