Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.
In Story’s (Problems of Translation, 2015) second novel, several outsiders try to outrun their pasts.
In 1971, Clayton Poole is a 34-year-old journalist for the Rolling Hills Reporter newspaper in Montana. In the paper’s “morgue” of articles from other news outlets, he’s startled by a recent piece about a woman in Washington state who confesses to killing her estranged husband with a gun that a “mysterious stranger” gave to her. This discovery leads him to call an emergency meeting with his editor, but the exact reason for his excitement isn’t immediately revealed. In 1965, Rusty Thomas meets a waitress named Maddie in a diner at the limits of Southeast City, Washington. He presents her with a pair of nylons that he won in a radio contest. Their ensuing relationship is troubled by the specter of Maddy’s past. In 1952, Travis Mackey is a 15-year-old youth who lives with his father, the caretaker of a shutdown gypsum mine in the Coast Range in California. Ever since his mother’s untimely death, his dad has taken to beating him regularly. One day, on a deserted country road, he looks up and sees a condor, and he imagines it swooping down to sink its talons into the old man. Not long afterward, a stranger appears at the mine toting a gun. The narrative spans almost seven decades, beginning in 1952 and concluding in 2018, but author Story proves to be a master of the slow reveal, gradually pulling away the veil that shrouds a secret that’s central to the plot. He does so by sharing details of his characters only when readers truly need to know them, and not before. Regarding Rusty, Story writes laconically, “Though he lived close to the heart of the town, near the college, he was customarily drawn to peripheries.” Such revelations lead to further questions; for instance, is Rusty drawn to peripheries because he has something to hide? The novel’s epilogue is somewhat long-winded, unnecessarily tying up every loose end. Otherwise, though, this is a smartly conceived, beguiling tale that few readers will forget.
Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9862382-2-2
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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