The drama of the midlife crisis has never seemed more shopworn.
Sex, drugs, and midlife crisis: a British academic’s life spins out of control in a labored comedy, second-novelist Harding’s first US publication.
Michael Cole is a university English professor in an unidentified English city. His specialty is poet and cleric John Donne, “a like mind” because of his fear of death. Approaching 50, Cole broods obsessively about mortality when he’s not looking for another student to seduce (his long-suffering wife Alison is a former one) or feeding his coke habit. His blood pressure is so high his doctor insists he wear a monitor for a day, the exact same day that Cole sees his way clear to bedding the delectable 20-year-old Tamsin Graves. Coitus interruptus, alas: Tamsin notices the monitor and concludes Cole is taping their lovemaking. And that’s the feeble plot hook from which Cole’s subsequent problems hang. Tamsin lodges a complaint with the ethics committee, and Cole is suspended pending an investigation. Meanwhile, he’s started hallucinating. Three dead relatives pop up at crucial moments; flashbacks (little more than filler) give us their history. Cole’s living family is also a problem. Alison must be kept in the dark about his suspension; this involves subterfuge (Harding loves split-second timing routines, but their comic punch doesn’t connect). Cole’s two small boys are a handful. Nor must we forget the Old Soldier, as Cole fondly dubs his penis, for which he feels a fretful love that he denies Alison; too often lately he’s been missing in action. Finally, there’s the cocaine, which almost leads to Cole’s arrest; fortunately the cops are amenable to a nice fat bribe from his dealer. The final nail in his coffin is his climactic appearance to give the prestigious Kappelheim lecture, in a bid to become head of department; his buffoonery just reminds us how far we are from the nuanced academic intrigue of David Lodge’s novels.
The drama of the midlife crisis has never seemed more shopworn.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-552-99966-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Black Swan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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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