by Lauren Grodstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2004
Grodstein’s collection (The Best of Animals, 2002) showed she had yet to find her voice, something still the case with her...
One rainy night in Brooklyn, a youngish woman asks her live-in boyfriend to fetch a pregnancy test from the drugstore. Some banter ensues. Are we in for a comic novel with serious overtones, or a serious novel with a comic edge?
Actually, neither one, and that’s the problem. Boyfriend Miller dutifully trots off to the drugstore, but we don’t find out until the end whether Lisa is pregnant; in the interim, we meander through Miller’s life, as boy and man (someone should send the author to the plot store), in a tone that’s fitfully comic. Grodstein likes drawing up fun lists as much as Letterman, though hers are shorter. (Sample: in Miller’s life, “Some Close Calls So Far.”) Yet there’s nothing that funny about his parents’ divorce when Miller is 14. His father, Stan, is a pharmaceuticals salesman and takes long business trips that send his wife, Bay, into fits of weeping. They divorce, and Miller chooses to stay with his mother, who continues to mope while Miller wets his bed. All this is more pathetic than funny. The big event in Miller’s life comes when he meets Blair Carter. By now he’s in his mid-20s, living in Queens, working for a dot-com. Blair is cute as a button and lives with her father on Park Avenue; she also works for him but, curiously, none of her friends have met him. Miller falls for Blair big-time. Why she would fall for this chain-smoking slob is as mysterious as her father’s whereabouts, and she does eventually dump him (“you loved me too much”). Not to worry. Soon Lisa will pick him up on line in a Krispy Kreme and make room for him in her Brooklyn place, though Miller realizes (back to the beginning) that he doesn’t love her enough to bring up a baby with her.
Grodstein’s collection (The Best of Animals, 2002) showed she had yet to find her voice, something still the case with her first novel.Pub Date: July 6, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-33770-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Share your opinion of this book
More by Lauren Grodstein
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.