What happens when two self-described sex fiends tie the knot? That's the subject of this broadly comic ninth novel from Nichols (The Milagro Beanfield War, 1984, etc.) Birds do it, bees do it, and newlyweds Roger and Zelda do it whenever the mood takes them, up against the refrigerator or out among the garbage cans. Though both are middle-aged, previously married and parents of teenagers, they have the sexual energy of, well, teenagers. But while everything worked fine during their courtship (``a lighthearted commuter affair'')—when both had other partners by mutual consent—marriage is another story. The problem is Zelda's jealousy, which begins on their wedding night (``Is it better with me than it was with Christie?'') and never lets up. Phone calls from Roger's ex-wife Bonnie and letters from his ex- girlfriends send Zelda into wild temper-tantrums; even his daughter Kim becomes a target (``watching you two together is almost like observing incest in action''). Roger reacts wimpishly, offering feeble resistance, trying to meet his deadlines (he's writing a profitable series of intergalactic detective stories) and knowing that Zelda's frenzied outbursts will be followed by even more frenzied lovemaking. Yet both the sex and the anger are mechanical: instead of the dynamics of a credible marriage, Nichols gives us two people on a sitcom treadmill, in a framework of strained bonhomie (``Get this, folks'') and hyperbolic imagery (``Zelda could shut down her ebullience...as emphatically as Fat Man had shut down Hiroshima''). He wraps up their first six months with a knock-down-drag-out fight, a reconciliation, and a too-cute peek into the future. Nichols is evidently in a slump; for all the effort, this is as unerotic as his last novel (An Elegy for September, 1992).
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2803-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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