An amiable and good-humored take on an old story, with an interesting West vs. East slant that enlivens what could have been...
German author Duve debuts with the tale of a young couple who move to the country seeking peace and quiet, only to find their lives turned inside out.
Two attractive yuppies from Hamburg, Leon and Martina Ulbricht, have recently married and are eager to settle down. Leon is a writer, Martina a production assistant on a television talk show. They imagine their future lying in what was East Germany, where real estate is cheap and plenty of open space remains. So they pack their belongings and hit the road for the town of Priesnitz, where they have bought a house with Leon’s advance for a biography of the Hamburg gangster Benno Pfitzner. (A measure of Leon’s innocence is that, although both the advance and his car were gifts from Pfitzner himself, he is still confident he can write an objective account.) Their first impression of the house is disappointing, but that’s mainly because it’s a day of torrential rain, the surrounding fields a quagmire. So they reserve their opinion for a sunny day—which never arrives. The rain continues unabated, and they soon realize that the stench in the air is coming from the marshes that surround them on every side. Leon finds it difficult to work in such an atmosphere and begins to take long walks in the damp to get his mind off his writer’s block. In the course of one of these strolls he’s accosted and seduced by Isadora Schlei, his older and somewhat obese neighbor down the road. Soon he’s spending less and less time at home with Martina and almost no time at all on his work. Eventually, Benno shows up demanding that he complete the manuscript—or else.
An amiable and good-humored take on an old story, with an interesting West vs. East slant that enlivens what could have been some very stale city-slicker clichés.Pub Date: March 4, 2003
ISBN: 1-58234-179-6
Page Count: 221
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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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