Religious hysteria provides the focus for one of Oates' least powerful, most monotonic and glutinous explorations of the fevered mind. Nathanael Vickery is a child born of violence, son of a teen-age rape victim, raised by a Jesus-loves-me grandmother and an atheist doctor grandfather in the Forties near the Chautauqua Mountains. Grandma Opal croons about this special, God-touched baby, "He knows all there is to know," and sure enough, by the time Nathanael can walk and talk, he's seeing visions and getting personal whispered endorsements from Jesus: "The inhabitants of the world cannot touch you. . . . For you are of the same substance as I—you are not like other men." A splashy career in evangelism is inevitable for this child prodigy with his "rare powers of preaching and healing and prophesy," but Nathanael's cynical grandpa (soon dead of a stroke) is the least of the pubescent preacher's problems: he is prone to Pride—Jesus forces him to get humble by chewing on a live chicken—and, above all, Lust, in the person of Leonie Beloff, daughter of Rev. Beloff the Radio & TV Evangelist. Nathanael succumbs to this Lust, sort of, so he must be punished—on a live Good Friday telecast, he gouges his eye with a paring knife (as in "if thine eye offend thee," etc.). Strangely enough, this crazy gesture merely boosts Nathanael's Pentecostal ministry, and in the Sixties he's the Master of the Seekers for Christ and just about convinced that he is Jesus himself (a problem, because "If I am Christ, then who will save me?"). But in 1974 comes a final vision/breakdown, leaving Nathanael the quasi-schizophrenic whose voice we hear praying off and on through this book—a work which heats up every now and then with Oates' infectious relish for dark thoughts and deeds, but which leans on her most unlovely trademarks—sloppily wrought-up language, fuzzily pretentious thematics—at unflattering length.
Pub Date: July 28, 1978
ISBN: 0575026715
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978
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
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