A utopia that could use some drama.
A man travels through time to a primeval paradise in this earnest utopian fable.
An archaeological team excavating an ancient village in Russia unearths a bizarre anomaly–a 2800- year-old manuscript written in American-inflected English. It’s the memoir of Erik, a clinic manager, who wakes from a car crash to find himself in a mountain forest in Siberia, circa 800 B.C. Erik, who had been languishing in empty consumerism, feels instantly reinvigorated and “shout[s] in delight…with the joy of being alive.” His joy increases on meeting the Narod people, a “good looking folk” in sensible wool tunics who welcome him with hearty stew, heady mead and rich, dark bread. Quickly learning the language and proving an adept axe man on the woodcutting detail, Erik fits right into their preternaturally tolerant and nonmaterialistic village. Kindness, generosity and good prevail, and everyone has enough. Believing that there is “no right or wrong way to live, except [to] do no harm, care for each other, and be responsible for your own happiness,” the Narod frown on violence and smile on casual public nudity and same-sex liaisons. (These last tendencies unite in the lanky, oft-unclothed frame of Sigurd, a younger man who becomes Erik’s lover.) Instead of gory Hollywood spectacle, the Narod have harvest festivals and winter nights in which “folk sat on the benches by the fire and told stories and sang old songs.” The author’s utopian formula boils down to the notion that greed, hatred, cities and modernity are bad while sharing, love, villages and primitivism are good. Unfortunately, this unoriginal vision isn’t very compelling. The Narod–loosely based on the tribes who would someday settle Finland (and, one imagines, Woodstock)–live in cheerful, enlightened contentment, but their “perfect harmony” is pretty boring to read about. It’s only when Scythian horsemen, with their deplorable lust for gold and slaves and their jealous knife fights, finally show up to spoil the Narod paradise that Bragg shows us interesting human beings.
A utopia that could use some drama.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4363-9907-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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