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THE LOST

In his hardcover debut, pseudonymous Cambridge professor Aycliffe (Night of the Apocalypse, 1995, etc., as Daniel Easterman) handily upgrades the vampire novel through fine writing and realism. While echoing the diaries and letters of Stoker's original, Aycliffe shores up fantasy with detail built richly from daily life. He begins with a tremendously attractive sense of humor and appealing characters—though humor fades as the creepy crawlies take over. A prep-school teacher in Cambridge, Michael Feraru, inherits Castle Vliacu, his family's fortress in the Transylvanian Alps and hopes to turn it into an orphanage for Romanian children. Delightful letters pass between Michael and his love, Sophie Wandless, back in Cambridge, as he describes his travels through Eastern Europe, his frustrating encounters with bureaucrats, and the gloomy life in today's Bucharest. Meanwhile, he hires a research assistant, Liliana, to help him establish his bona fides as the owner of Castle Vliacu. Materialistic Liliana and her secret boyfriend, however, hope to lead him into opening not an orphanage but rather a hotel at the castle, a business likely to reap great financial rewards. A grinding winter journey to the castle takes Michael and Liliana through villages where many peasants seem never to have seen a car. When their own breaks down, the two nearly die of exposure while plowing about a frigid countryside shadowed by wolves. After arriving at the castle on its beetling mountaintop, they find only an elderly blind woman and her son, who haven't left the site in 50 years. A fine library reveals much about the darkness underlying Michael's ancestors—and himself. At the time, sex blooms between Michael and Liliana, whisperings abound in empty rooms, and a ghost roams the corridors. Pale white wolves that are not wolves but strigoi, or the undead, pace the hills. And what will Michael find in the locked room in the cellar? Brevity breeds tight storytelling, with a final muted twist that proves just enough.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-06-105225-6

Page Count: 176

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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