by Julia Fierro ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2017
Jam-packed with stereotypes, bad sex scenes, and clichés of every kind, this book has something to appall almost anyone.
The summer of 1992 is pure hell on an insular islet off the coast of Long Island.
“GRUDDER IS CANCER / GRUDDER KILLS,” reads the graffiti on the local war memorial. Tensions flare on Avalon Island as a defense contractor called Grudder Aviation runs into economic and environmental problems. Dealing with the fallout both publicly and privately are three generations of the islands' most prominent families, who live on magnificent side-by-side estates. If an author is God to her characters, the people of Avalon must have done something to offend Fierro (Cutting Teeth, 2014). For lo, she hath visited upon them toxic waste; racial bigotry; class resentment; vandalism; children strung out on drugs watching snuff and porn videos; abusive fathers, husbands, and dog owners; senile dementia; a weak peacetime economy; the rise of Bill Clinton; murder; suicide; stillbirth; and, undoubtedly worst of all, a biblical plague of gypsy moth caterpillars, described over and over in excruciating detail. Young lovers take to the woods—and listen to “the cack-cacking of the caterpillars feeding and the patter of chewed-up leaves spat thousands at a time onto the forest floor.” Jeans are “spattered with [the] black slime” of caterpillar excrement, the little buggers are found in socks, bras, and ball gowns, there are “swarm[s] of caterpillars slithering across the window” and hands “slick with their gummy remains.” Still, as one character points out, "perhaps a plague was just what the island needed." To get them through these revolting times, the characters find inspiration in sources as diverse as the plot of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the essays of James Baldwin, and the radical enlightenment offered by Oprah: “After each Oprah episode, she was depleted. To have eighty years of preconceived notions shattered, and then rearranged, in just forty-five minutes.”
Jam-packed with stereotypes, bad sex scenes, and clichés of every kind, this book has something to appall almost anyone.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08751-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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BOOK REVIEW
by Julia Fierro
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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