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THE LAST DAY OF THE WAR

Name: THE LAST DAY OF THE WAR
Author: Judith Claire Mitchell
ISBN: 0-375-42166-1

by Judith Claire Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 2004

Disappointingly schematic.

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An uneven debut evokes the plight of the Armenians under Turkish rule before 1914, describing the love between an Armenian-American and a young Jewish woman from St. Louis.

Mitchell has meticulously researched her settings—immigrant life in Rhode Island; the US as it goes to war in 1917; the war itself; the subsequent Peace Conference in Paris; as well as the history of the Christian Armenians and their persecution by the Islamic Ottoman Empire. But period details aren’t enough to make the story soar. On her 18th birthday, in the St. Louis library, Yael Weiss meets Dub Hagopian, a US soldier about to be sent to France. Yael, smitten, next joins the YMCA, giving a false name, age, and faith, and with fellow volunteers lands in France as the war ends, but not the need for help. As the Paris Peace Conference gets under way, she again runs into Dub. Only a baby when his family fled the Turkish pogroms, Dub, very bright, is a respected translator for the Conference. Reluctantly, however, pressured by Raffi, a fellow Armenian and neighbor, he also belongs to a band of Armenian freedom fighters bent on assassinating culpable Turkish leaders. Torn between his loyalties—he has also promised, with certain conditions, to marry Raffi’s neurotic sister Ramela—Dub falls deeply in love with Yael, who is soon spying for him and helping him track down a certain Kerim Bey. A man of his word, Dub confronts Bey, whom Raffi, a self-righteous fanatic, wants dead. Unlike the poor Armenians, who will be betrayed at the Peace Conference by the Allies, Dub and Yael, who finally comes clean about her age, her name, and her Judaism, may have a shot at a better life.

Disappointingly schematic.

Pub Date: June 15, 2004

ISBN: 0-375-42166-1

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.