A crowded but very impressive debut, especially for readers who like their fiction strange.
This debut novel follows the multifarious adventures of a doctor as he searches for whatever succor a mysterious Lost House in the New England woods may offer.
First-person narrator Dr. Kit Zeno is a Wesford, Massachusetts, pediatrician trying to keep his career going and save his foundering marriage. On the first point, he’s semi-successful; on the second, he’s not, and he’s heartbroken when his wife, Beryl, walks out, leaving him with their two daughters, Cassie and Ruby Jo. From there on, the book becomes an episodic grab bag. Readers meet the good doctor’s patients (and their parents) early on, and they meet the children again later, after they’re grown. These kids—Andy Cosmo, Dewy Diels, Monica Herdman, and others—turn out to be both brilliant and twisted; Andy, for example, is a computer genius—and also possibly guilty of matricide. Zeno has shady dealings with people performing studies at the pharmaceutical startup Tecche, including its seriously weird leader, Bucky Magnifico. There’s also Stan Trupeano, a local “old crank” rumored to be a mad scientist. Midway through the book, Zeno discovers the Lost House in the woods—a magical refuge. But will the story end, for Zeno, with salvation or with paradise lost? The protagonist and author share a name and a profession, which may give readers a rather blurred feeling: has the real Zeno had these adventures? Almost certainly not, but the author may be implying that we should all let our alter egos run loose. The Lost House is the only genuine magic in the book, but almost all the characters are beyond strange—either over the edge, or close to it. Zeno, like any classic hero, is searching not just for this Lost House, but for his true self and for peace. Ambition, though, is almost the undoing of Zeno, the author, as he can’t resist adding yet another character, yet another subplot, yet another flight of fancy. As a result, readers will quite often feel swamped.
A crowded but very impressive debut, especially for readers who like their fiction strange.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4834-1743-1
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2016
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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