by Joshua Gaylord ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2009
A very grown-up novel about adolescence and the folly of adults, by an impressive new voice in American fiction.
In Gaylord’s winning debut, teenage girls and their male teachers vie for power at a Manhattan prep school.
Leo Binhammer, the only man in the English department at the Carmine-Casey School for Girls, luxuriates in his roles as brooding hero to the students, preening pet of the female faculty. He’s unsettled by the arrival of charismatic new English teacher Ted Hughes. It’s short for Theodore, not Edward like the famous poet, but Leo resents someone “who would use the nickname Ted, knowing…what literary baggage it carries.” Leo’s not just angry because this interloper will be his rival for the girl’s swooning devotion; he also knows that Ted slept with his wife, Sarah Lewis, a few years ago at a conference. Although Leo has reconciled with Sarah, he’s obsessed with the man who made him a cuckold, at first despising Ted, then befriending him. They form a boyish camaraderie of witty insults, but Leo keeps his wife’s identity a secret from Ted and his new comrade a secret from Sarah. As their complicated relationship plays out through the school year, the seniors grapple with the prospect of life after Carmine-Casey. Head girls Dixie Doyle (ironically sporting pigtails and a lollypop) and Liz Warren (brilliant and bespectacled) are extra antsy, each vaguely aware that her special status is a gilded construct that may not survive outside these hallowed halls. The author, himself a teacher at a Manhattan prep school, is a keen observer of this privileged world. He captures Ted’s and Leo’s point of view in such lush language (an auditorium “full of the glowing bodies of ridiculous virgins,” elsewhere described by Ted as “adorable little bundles of outrage”) that readers might overlook his shrewd, subtle presentation of the students.
A very grown-up novel about adolescence and the folly of adults, by an impressive new voice in American fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-176901-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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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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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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