The mind's freedom to invent and reshape reality is blunted by the dead weight of materialismin this sluggish metaphysical fantasy by the Argentine-born author of Nobody Nothing Never (1994), etc. In 1855, a Maltese-Italian magician and telepathist, Bianco, is exposed as a fake by a ``positivist cabal'' and forced to flee to the Argentine pampas. Endeavoring to become rich and reclaim his honor, Bianco condescends to involve himself with such material entities as building bricks, wire fencing, a cattle-wealthy doctor (Garay L¢pez), who agrees to become his business partner, and the beautiful young woman (Gina), initially involved with the doctor, who consents (for reasons not clearly revealed) to marry Bianco and assist his ongoing ``experiments in telepathic communication.'' The real world obtrudes upon this dreamer's hermetic sensibility in such forms as Gina's pregnancy, the contentious avarice that disfigures Garay L¢pez's privileged family, and a climactic outbreak of yellow fever. Bianco's preference for the world inside his own head finds expression in tediously reiterated (and seemingly arbitrary) abstractions, permitting the confused reader respite only when the focus shifts away from Saer's self-absorbed protagonist. The novel's pessimism is far more successfully incarnated in Gary L¢pez's urbane ``theatrical allegory...The Magi,'' an unwritten work whose deadpan premise is that no Christ child ever gets born in Bethlehem after all and life there goes on pretty much as usual. Saer's own novel, being about as uneventful as any can be, could use more of such subversive witand greater development of a fascinating subplot in which a half-breed deserter from the army fathers a large family, rapes his daughters, is murdered by his eldest son, and leaves among his survivors a mute, traumatized boy who somehow metamorphoses into a verse-speaking prophet. Here was the novel Saer didn't write. Only in such brief sequences does this soporific treatise shake itself awake and assume the welcome contours of living and breathing fiction.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-85242-249-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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