A historically rich chronicling of private suffering across time, strata, and space.
In this collection of short stories, a varied cast of characters navigates the trauma of trying to reconcile past with present.
Some tales in Kasten’s (Better Days, 2013, etc.) collection address the ways in which lives in lands that are literally foreign to one another elude harmony. Professor Li Da-Ming weathers the overwhelming task of pursuing a competitive job opportunity in America while past horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution stir within him. An old woman finds herself flooded by memories of the Guatemalan civil war and the Mayan ruins of Tikal while babysitting in America. In one particularly breathtaking story, a boy growing up in World War II-ravaged Germany longs to be a soldier until, years later, he goes to war in Vietnam and is confronted by the “dazed, numb, animal stupidity” of doing so. Other tales are not immigrant stories, but they do address the ways in which past lives are rendered foreign lands by present disturbances. A Midwestern man and his family embark on the same trip he took to New Mexico as a bachelor and despairs when it fails to go as planned. An American veteran watches his cancer-ridden wife approach death and becomes hounded by memories of unprocessed loss. An old man joins a writing workshop and—unanticipatedly—revisits a heartbreaking childhood episode that he cannot bring himself to put on paper. As a whole, the collection swells with heart-rending tension. Kasten’s decision to allow these traumatic stories to find space in her prose—which is lovely and richly detailed—but not necessarily in the exterior lives of the formidably diverse characters is affecting. Further, the author’s expanse of historical knowledge is impressive. The opportunity to dip into an intimate day in the life of each pocket of history she writes about becomes an engrossing adventure for readers. That said, many of the tales’ endings feel either hastened, unfinished, or as if they are working too hard to make story titles relevant, an authorial maneuver that sells these otherwise powerful works short.
A historically rich chronicling of private suffering across time, strata, and space.Pub Date: May 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-09162-3
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Islet Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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