Connelly's first novel presents two hellish, interminable, and presumably normal days and nights in the life of an EMS paramedic. For half his shift, Frank Pierce just drives an ambulance through the streets of Hell's Kitchen; for the other half, he sits in the back with the patients en route to Our Lady of Mercy (universally called ``Misery'') Hospital. Regardless, in Connelly's hands, every emergency call blossoms into a story. Mary Foster calls 911 fearing her husband Richard is dead, and then when he turns up in the next room, fears she's dying herself. Riot, nÇ Frederick Smith, is a dwarf whose pasty makeup only accentuates the effects of his heroin overdose. Noel is a psychotic whose signal symptom is a suicidally uncontrollable thirst. Mr. Oh, Misery's worst pest, is a drunk who calls 911 more often than most people call home. As Frank makes the rounds among these lost souls, he's haunted by his own hard-case father; by Rose, the asthmatic teenager whose life he couldn't save even though he'd intubated a hundred patients without a hitch before; and by Patrick Burke, a retired veteran whose determination to die was thwarted first by his family and then by Frank, who jerked him back to life through the kindness of CPR, epinephrine, and a calcium injection. As he cautiously circles Burke's daughter Mary, who's dogging the corridors of Mercy while waiting for her father to wake up and forgive her for wishing him dead, Frank sees that she's as damaged as he himself is. But how can their relationship come to anything when Frank can't break out of his cycle of horrific memories, and when all the normal cues for climax—from the loss of love and illusion to the parody of death and resurrection—are the stuff of his everyday rounds? Don't expect a strong sense of plot or direction from this zany, painfully sensitive debut—just think of it as a nightmare to endure along with Frank until you're released by the last page. (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-40040-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
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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