A first novel that offers a lot more than most.
A Palestinian refugee and an American college student find love amid a clash of cultures during the first Gulf War.
Khalid and Irene meet in the mid-’80s at a UCLA protest rally calling for an end to apartheid. He has been a refugee since the age of eight, when an Israeli Defense Forces bombing killed his parents in the June ’67 Middle East War. Irene is an emotional exile who left her family’s smothering East Coast wealth to drift through the alien beauty of Southern California. A chance meeting with an older woman (who seems to be based on the late poet Kathy Acker) helps steer Irene away from minimum-wage jobs and dead-end friends toward college courses, political causes and eventually Khalid. The instant sexual heat Irene and Khalid experience forces them to start reckoning with long-buried feelings. Just as they begin to trust one another, Irene learns that Khalid is already married, albeit only for green-card purposes. Suddenly the ethnic differences that initially delighted the couple and added playful sparring to their passion begin to divide them. During the run-up to the first Gulf War, the geo-political machinations of the governments involved—especially, in Khalid’s eyes, the bullying arrogance of the United States—take on very personal implications . . . and throw the lovers’ future into doubt, recrimination and worse. Debut novelist Jensen, winner of the 2001 Raymond Carver Prize for Short Fiction, powerfully portrays Khalid’s boyhood amid the violence of the Middle East and the proud but complicated family that he either lost or left behind. Irene’s background, by contrast, is implied rather than realized, which dilutes the clarity of her character as an adult. Ultimately, the lesser story (boy-meets-girl) undermines the greater one (East meets West). But the tale is well crafted, with its scenes of high drama and great sex.
A first novel that offers a lot more than most.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-931896-22-4
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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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