A dull protagonist, awkwardly presented.
Semi-autobiographical first novel by Moyer (Tumbling: Stories, 1998) depicts an army brat’s coming of age.
There’s little novelistic coherence or flow connecting the chapters (six of them previously published in literary reviews), which function as independent units chronicling discrete moments in the childhood and adolescence of Chester Patterson. Beginning with sixth grade, he tells us of episodes running through to 1965, when he turned 21. His good-humored, laid-back dad, also named Chester, is a captain with a desk job; his mom Betty, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, is a 1950s vamp with a small drinking problem; there’s also a kid sister, Janet. The Pattersons are as bland as a TV family of the period. As they move from Pennsylvania to Japan, Texas and Georgia, Chester slowly grows up, though we wait in vain for the happy jolt of an unexpected phrase or insight. He gets his first lesson in kissing from an obliging older cousin, Frenchie. Two years later, when he’s 15, she allows him to penetrate her briefly and experience calf love in all its glory. Another coming-of-age staple occurs when Chester encounters the school bully in Texas. There’s no glory here: Instead of establishing his manhood, he allows the bully to make off with his cowboy hat. Too often Chester is the bystander, watching his dad helping a woman give birth on the highway, or listening to the sad story of a beautiful young Pakistani bracing herself for an arranged marriage. His progression from conventional soldier’s son to disciple of the Beats is largely hidden from view. Just how far has Chester traveled? Though intellectually liberal, he has no problem joining a racially segregated fraternity in 1960s Illinois and entering enthusiastically into frat-house rituals. He’s just as schizophrenic in his romantic life; he artfully courts a stunning fellow student, then blows everything by behaving like an insensitive jerk. Chester still has a long way to go.
A dull protagonist, awkwardly presented.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57962-194-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2009
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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