by Joseph Caldwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1992
An emotionally numb American tenor, good enough only for opera's secondary roles, finds the grief he seeks over his male lover's death by entangling himself in the lives of overwrought Neapolitans. Like Caldwell's last two novels (Under the Dog Star, 1987, The Deer at the River, 1984), this book doesn't jell. Worse yet, the characters do not behave like recognizable human beings. Even the motives of the protagonist, Michael Ruane, are unclear despite his frequent interior monologues. Ruane arrives in Naples to sing the role of Spoletta in Tosca at San Carlo, and the role of the Madwoman in Benjamin Britten's Curlew River, a one-act opera that Ruane has translated into Italian and also directs. A request from a diva he can't refuse adds another role, but this one's offstage: ``the uncle from Rome,'' a fictitious character Neapolitans engage to lend status to weddings, Rome being the center of power. This embroils Ruane in the real-life affairs of the family of the groom, who raped the bride so she would have to marry him, according to local mores, instead of his brother. This dysfunctional family behaves with an absurdity that wouldn't be acceptable even in grand opera, where the music supplies at least some credence to the plot. Ruane further complicates his life by his attentions to a transvestite prostitute who is dying of AIDS, the disease that killed Ruane's lover back in New York. The story takes on its only conviction in a flashback to Ruane's desertion by his lover, who died without giving Ruane a chance to ease his final days, leaving Ruane bereft but with a torpid heart. Overheated yet strangely cold doings in present-day Naples with a sexually confused hero blundering among preposterous people.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84058-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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