More of a prose poem than a conventional novel, Torra's debut is set in the '60s at the gas station operated by the adolescent narrator's father in a working-class Massachusetts town, offering a compendium of thick description and male anecdote. At the center of this study in ordinary life is the narrator's father, a hard-working Italian immigrant with chronic agita, and a weakness for the dogtrack and women (other than his stove-bound wife). Weaving back and forth in time, Torra's pronounless prose records the casual speech of the station workers and hangers-on, an endless stream of boasts about sex, along with jokes about masturbation and homosexuality. From his grime-covered perspective, the narrator comments on local events: A boy drowns nearby; the town endures a devastating fire; his father moves out. But the real poetry is closer by: the naming of parts of an engine; the craft of doing detail work on choice automobiles. In the local culture of baksheesh, the narrator's father sweetens the cops for local towing rights, greases the corrupt station inspectors, and satisfies the voracious appetites of the gas franchise rep. The drama shakes only their small world: His father invests in oil filters that turn out to be faulty; a rust-chip lodges in the narrator's eye; a stolen- car scandal comes too close to home. Social commentary begins to stir when the narrator notices the cover-up of a drunken priest's Christmas Day accident, begins to drift into the psychedelic subculture of the times, and turns down his obvious patrimony. The father sells the station and their loyal station dog dies, as does a less complicated era, but not before the men buy the boy his first backseat tumble with the fat local prostitute. Torra strings together lots of short, declarative sentences into long flowing word-hoards. Annoying at first, it becomes as intoxicating (and dizzying) as the smell of gasoline.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-944072-67-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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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