A nondescript and intermittently tedious collection of 22 stories: the last two or three years' worth from the protean Oates, who seems here to be reworking with minimal variations materials she has used far too many times before. Preoccupying themes include, as always, the psychic undercurrents and emotional consequences of marital and domestic coexistence and conflict; the tensions between prosperous, complacent people and the underprivileged and envious outsiders who threaten their security: in a more general way, what one of her narrators calls "Perennial questions of philosophy. The mystery of good, evil. God, Devil." Oates's characters are placed in melodramatic or grotesque circumstances that cause them to reconsider who and what they are: Examples include "Life After High School," in which a "golden girl" for whom a classmate committed suicide later learns the truth about his infatuation with her; "The Goose-Girl," a strange story about a mother's initially reluctant involvement in her grown son's sexual confusions; and "The Missing Person," a smartly conceived tale—about a man's baffled empathy with the deeply troubled woman he loves—that's nevertheless clumsily overwritten. Sexual disturbance and threat predominate ("The Lost Child," "The Girl Who Was to Die"), as does domestic violence ("Christmas Night 1962"), and—in a reversion to Oates's early work—religious obsession ("Mark of Satan" is the weakest of several such subpar performances). Two stories alone seem worth preserving: "The Brothers," whose title "characters" are fantasized objective correlatives pushing a repressed music teacher toward acknowledgement of his true "erotic nature"; and "The Passion of Rydcie Mather," a skillfully developed tale of a middle-aged schoolbus driver's quarrel with God and decision to take control of her own fate. There's little else of interest here. Oates's reputation—to say nothing of her readers—would be better served by a carefully chosen Selected Stories showcasing her best work of the past 30-plus years, which isn't much more than a faint memory flickering throughout this deeply disappointing volume.
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93972-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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
APPRECIATIONS
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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