Gardner's first short-fiction collection since The King's Indian (1974) offers ten highly polished stories—which, though generally unaffecting, do represent the range of his narrative imperatives. Here, as always, is Gardner-as-artist-philosopher, with clanging, derivative parables on the moral conflicts of the artist: the strained yet seductive title story, about a speech-making restaurant cook ("I'm an artist, you understand that? What's an artist? . . . An artist is a man who makes a covenant with tradition," etc.) whose esthetic need to cook a Vietnamese dog dish repels, then convinces the community; "The Problems of Art," an arch nouveau-Poe fable about a book-surrounded fellow seeing visions in his library ("I saw Ahab. . . who argued with Boswell's Dr. Johnson, boringly") while evading real-life demands (his father in the asylum); and the interminable "Vlemk the Box-Painter"—which stacks up no less than three conflicted artists, along with questions of reality (a painted face so real it talks), artistic honesty ("Is it our business to set down lies, or are we here to tell the Truth. . . ?"), inner and outer beauty. . . plus a fairy-tale format. Rather less numbing, though equally didactic and artist-centered, are Gardner's more realistic moral fables: in "Redemption," a boy, guilt-ridden over the accidental tractor-death of his brother, is drawn to music; in "Nimram," a world-famous conductor's complacency is shaken by an encounter with a terminally ill teenager. And Gardner comes closest to direct emotional appeal with two reminiscence-based stories (though again about art)—a dance school in 1940s St. Louis, a Welsh group-sing in upstate N.Y.—and with "The Joy of the Just": a folksy-comic yarn about the outlandish revenge of old Aunt Ella Reikert, who can't get the preacher to admit that his wife ran Aunt Ella off the road. True, none of these tales is less than skillful: Gardner's prose is smooth, musical, elaborate. But in most of them he seems to be writing far too much for his fellow artists, far too little for the world outside the ivory tower.
Pub Date: May 1, 1981
ISBN: 0679723501
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981
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
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