A vast, ambitious and highly personal portrait of an often forgotten demographic, rendered with attention and sensitivity.
In Lund’s debut novel, the streets aren’t a safe place for anyone to live—especially not a kid.
Joe Rodgers is the goodhearted, hardworking executive director of Excelsior House, a home for troubled youth in San Francisco. His role as a hero to those in his care all but precludes the possibility of his romantically pursuing Lucy, a young woman he’s taken under his wing. Lucy is just one among a diverse cast of characters inhabiting Excelsior House’s cottages; others include Sarah Hillsbrook, a politician’s daughter who was sent there after a suicide attempt, brought about in part by her parents’ stormy marriage; and Sylvia Sanchez, a talented Salvadoran muralist concerned with issues of social justice, whose traumatic decision to have an abortion set her parents against her. Sprawling and conversational, the novel delves into the painful, puzzling lives of these and other young adults, each trying to make their way in the world. The lessons they learn are tough, and their competition with each other is even tougher; on top of that, gang activity (and murder), prostitution (and rape), and drug abuse beckon to them from every street corner. This dialogue-heavy novel takes a lively, original tack in its evocation of street life and, in particular, the massive material and emotional difficulties that street youth face. Overall, it’s less a clearly defined story than a textured sketch of environments, situations, dilemmas and tragedies. Nonetheless, the novel resolves several conflicts, including those between Lucy and her careless boyfriend, Keyshawn; and between Sylvia and her unforgiving, cruel parents. Much of the dialogue skillfully mirrors the inflections and jargon of street talk, lending a palpable realism to this fine-grained narrative and situating the novel in the long tradition of American dialect literature.
A vast, ambitious and highly personal portrait of an often forgotten demographic, rendered with attention and sensitivity.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615882000
Page Count: 386
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
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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