In his first collection of stories, poet Allman (Curve Away from Stillness, not reviewed) drags readers into a New York City and environs peopled with some of the most depressing losers he could dig up. An old gas station attendant with only one leg broods in ``The Tip (1964)'' about his invalid wife who should have died five years ago; in ``Sisters (1971),'' spinster sisters, one with severe mental problems, take the subway to visit their ne'er-do-well brother. Allman begins most stories with extremely lifelike settings. Then, in a botched attempt at experimental narrative, passages jump from present to past, reality to fantasy. ``A Chronic Case (1959),'' for example, charts the life of a man convicted of killing his daughter's lover and his (possibly hallucinatory) involvement with a female prisoner. While these forays into the Great Unknown are obviously intentional, they are too erratic to be of use, serving merely to frustrate readers. Also disconcerting is a monotonous emotional tempo that fails to adapt as the author moves from story to story, character to character. Given this lack of differentiation, the use of dates (mostly in the 1950s) to place the stories seems superficial. Only the three final stories, set in the last decade, take on weight. Allman himself seems more involved in the present, not obscuring his stories with extraneous gimmicks. ``Losers and Gainers (1987)'' is powerful if only because, writing in the first person, Allman offers more insights into his protagonists' motives. The narrator begins by telling readers she could graph her boyfriend's downhill plunge, adding to the metaphor later with ``If he were a stock, he'd be—0.04.'' ``The Substitute (1992),'' in which a Yugoslavian immigrant contrasts the war in her homeland with her granddaughter near death in an incubator, is also particularly vivid. But too many of these stories, like their characters, have long ago stagnated.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-8112-1274-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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
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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