Shticks and moans: the slight, familiar midlife crisis of 38- year-old actor Benjamin West—an overgrown adolescent who can't make the Big Commitment to his girlfriend. The one somewhat distinctive element in Ben's half-jokey, half-maudlin narrative is that he recently helped his ailing father to commit suicide (pills and a plastic bag). But first-novelist Pearlman doesn't treat this subject with any depth or nuance—it's just one more thing for Ben to kvetch about. And the other bits and pieces here are standard, vaguely dated fare. Ben, who's had success on a TV series, wonders whether or not to audition for a new Mamet play on Broadway. He tries to pick up a girl in a bar with such suave lines as ``I love the way your skirt hugs your ass.'' He recalls his Brooklyn childhood, masturbation, early sexual experiences. He visits the house where his parents lived— and imagines that the dead mother and father have returned for a cute-sentimental chat with him. He learns that his brother in Chicago has testicular cancer. And, primarily, he resists pressure from girlfriend Jessica to settle down, grow up, get married, make a baby—until intimations of mortality finally (in a stick-on happy ending) end Ben's serious case of arrested development. Pearlman comes up with a few bright lines, and the show-biz atmosphere occasionally rings true. Otherwise: a limp mixture of generic Jewish-family material, weak X-rated stand-up comedy (with a misogynistic edge), and unpersuasive coming-of-age dramatics.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-77657-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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
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