Undisciplined, weakly plotted first novel—about a young drug- runner who wants out—that offers the most visceral portrait of crack-curdled inner-city life since Richard Price's Clockers, and likely the most authentic ever: Rodriguez is a native of the South Bronx, which he also brought to vividly garish life in the collection The Boy Without a Flag. While Price worked a large canvas, covering cop-life as well as crack-life, Rodriguez sticks to the ghetto—and his is Hispanic, not African-American. This narrow focus serves him well as he unfold what's at heart a very simple—and familiar—plotline. His 16-year-old hero, Miguel, delivers crack for a rising druglord named Spider. But Miguel—who doesn't do crack himself—is ready to quit: He's too sensitive and smart to carry on, despite the fast money, the arguments of his arsonist roommate, Firebug, and the threats of Spider. Miguel's resolve is boosted by the urgings of his crackhead friend Amelia, and it's cemented when he falls for a prototypical good girl who can't bear his way of life. When Miguel tries to make his break, he's set up by Spider and takes two bullets—but he survives and, partly thanks to a father-figure Hispanic cop, finds the courage to walk away for good. But this highly moral plot, which could fly as a TV Afternoon Special for teens, is only a rickety scaffold for Rodriguez's real triumph: his stunning depiction—in slang-and-dialect-ridden prose (``I can still see huh, puttin' on huh putona clothes t`go out't some social club...'') that's so freewheeling it sometimes rolls right off the page—of life in Spidertown. Burrowing deep into his characters' complex souls, he makes each rich and sympathetic, even Firebug, who lives for his ``wienie roasts''—and that's some achievement. Despite the slack plotting: a piercing and unforgettable cry from the heart of crack-hell.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-56282-845-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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