by Jim Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2003
The tale’s circuitous, cryptic organization is daunting, but Lewis’s crisp, forthright style and arresting character...
A legacy of instability and alienation plagues two generations in this ruthlessly compact third outing by Lewis (Why the Tree Loves the Ax, 1999, etc.).
A tricky structure that involves leaps forward and backward in time and seemingly unrelated subplots eventually discloses connections between WWII hero and political functionary Walter Selby and his son Frank, a film actor whose burden of untold family secrets propels him into early retirement. The story’s first half depicts Walter’s infatuation with his eventual wife, beautiful, distractible Nicole Lattimore; his disillusioning tenure as aide to Tennessee’s manipulative governor; and Walter’s heartbroken discovery of Nicole’s infidelity, after which he shoots her to death and is sent to prison. The second half portrays Frank as a foster child (who takes the surname of his “new” parents the Cartwrights) raised with his younger sister Gloria in ignorance of their family’s past; a teenager obsessed with a seductive classmate (Kimmie Remington) on her way to becoming an irreversible paranoid schizophrenic; and a middle-aged divorced father whose buried energies are reawakened when aging film queen Lenore Riviere tempts him with a “riddling” story of a bastard prince’s moral quandary involving his betrayed father and adulterous mother (which is, incidentally, the source of Lewis’s title). There are also loosely related episodes featuring a murdered lottery winner and an itinerant Native American, and inexplicably, the full text of Casey Stengel’s testimony before Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver’s Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee. Lewis doesn’t pull all these materials together, but does create some smashing effects in his dénouement, as Frank travels to his dying father’s bedside seeking the answer to the “riddle” that embraces father and son alike: “Where does a man go, if he’s done wrong?”
The tale’s circuitous, cryptic organization is daunting, but Lewis’s crisp, forthright style and arresting character portraits lead toward a most satisfying payoff.Pub Date: July 25, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41417-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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by Jim Lewis
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by Jim Lewis
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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