Life in the Chicano community of El Paso during the 1960s, remembered by a boy soldier killed in Vietnam as he waits in his coffin to be flown home, provides the gist and the twist of V†zquez's brash first novel. Abandoned by his parents, raised by his father's mother, the hard-working family matriarch Nana Kika, Bernadino Dysyadachek (a.k.a. Buzzy Digit) has a lot to remember, much of it troubling. He remembers his mother, after taking his sisters away with her to follow her lover, promising to visit but never coming back; he remembers being molested by a drunken baker when sent by Nana Kika to get tamales for her stall in the street market; he remembers being disgraced in Little League when panic turned his red-hot bat in practice into one that could never find the ball; he remembers his cousin Red, who was already not a virgin when an uncle began abusing her, and who became his closest confidant. Buzzy shared many things with Red—secrets, sex, his dreams—but their closeness can't keep the world away. When relatives and neighbors go off to Vietnam, coming home one by one for burial, the shock runs deep. Having dropped out of school, and keen to be a hero for his family, underage Buzzy joins the army despite Red's efforts. Beloved Nana Kika dies while he's on a secret mission in the jungle, and even though he survives that tour of duty, becoming cocky enough in letters to Red to imagine his life after Vietnam, his fate proves no different than that of so many others from the barrio. Quirky, lyrical, kaleidoscopic, and supercharged with a choice assortment of sexual adventures (even JFK passes through El Paso, lingering long enough to philander), V†zquez's debut fiction has many fine touches, but its impact is diluted by a narrative structure too weak to unify the tale's rapidly shifting impressions and moods.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-03963-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
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
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