In seven stories that chronicle growing up Puerto Rican in the South Bronx—surrounded by violence, promiscuous sex, and casual drug use—Rodriguez captures the quick, jagged rhythms of street life. In the title piece, the narrator, who wants to be a writer, becomes enamored of his father's stories about American imperialism and refuses to salute the flag. After a big brouhaha, the authorities finally bring the father, intimidated and ready for compromise, into the situation, and the boy, diminished but aware of the world's complexity, capitulates. ``No More War Games'' introduces a 12-year-old girl, Nilsa, who—in a few pages—grows up fast, moving from ``war games'' (bottles and rocks thrown with a vengeance) to an exploration of her emerging sexuality. ``Babies'' is a gritty underbelly-of-life fiction about a female narrator, a 16-year-old junkie, who, denying the strength of her habit, watches one friend give away a baby before getting pregnant herself and choosing an abortion. Likewise, in ``Elba,'' Rodriguez dramatizes the way a young mother tries to raise her baby and make a life with the father, but then, in despair, leaves the baby so that she can have a night out. In ``The Lotto,'' one of the most powerful stories here, Dahlia loses her innocence amid dreams of the Lotto but tests negative for pregnancy, whereupon pregnant Elba (who reappears) breaks off the friendship. ``Birthday Boy'' shows a kid's descent into petty crime and indifference after a childhood of betrayal, desertion, and abuse. ``Short Stop,'' about Marty the motorman, is more buoyant than the others, mostly because Marty, accosted on all sides by crazies, goes about his business and survives. Occasionally derivative in its use of dialect, but a debut that's almost always striking in its bleakness, its empathy, and its convincing detail. A couple of these pieces previously appeared in Story.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-915943-74-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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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