A worthy parable of small changes and large obstacles.
Set in the near future, DeSain’s first novel is a wide-ranging satire of the workings of the government and the people who comprise it.
Tammy Usher works in the Department of Transportation supervising the scheduling and maintenance of the light-rail system, which has overtaken the car as the primary American mode of transport, as oil prices have risen. She is content with her work, fraught with office politics and headaches as it is. Tammy meets Bob, an inventor, who has a comparatively small invention that’s grand in Tammy’s eyes: an improvement to the rail system that will yield a “point-five-to-two percent efficiency increase.” They begin to work together in an effort to convince Congress to fund Bob’s invention; neither knows exactly how much work it will take to do so. In the course of their quest, they encounter government officials, lobbyists and those who fund them, politicians both liberal and conservative, church organizations and venture capitalists. DeSain pokes fun at all of them with an equally heavy hand. His strength as a writer lies with ideas rather than prose, but those ideas are sharp enough to make the book work. Many of those he spends several pages picking apart are characters who have lost, if indeed they ever had, the courage of their convictions. Liberal politicians who disclaim their radical pasts, religious men who care more about profits than salvation and spineless heirs to familial wealth all stand out as targets of satire. The route Tammy and Bob finally take to adding their small but significant contribution to ease the lives of the masses indicates, however, that unbending adherence to a set of principles is equally laughable. DeSain, himself a scientist with government experience, writes almost lovingly of the infuriating amount of red tape that faces an inventor who wants federal support and with disdain for those who ignore facts in favor of playing politics. Though the imagined near future is bleak in ways, it allows for some victories.
A worthy parable of small changes and large obstacles.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615686080
Page Count: 246
Publisher: John D. DeSain
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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