Foos strives for a light touch, but the recurrent references here (hair, feet, ham sandwiches, the allure of Jewry and Elvis...
After tackling wombs and walruses in her previous fiction, whimsical satirist Foos uses her fifth outing to showcase a human horn and an all-too-human King.
There are two sisters in Anywhere, U.S.A. One is beautiful and one is not (except for her feet). The beautiful sister (and narrator) does her best by the town’s unbeautiful by working as a hair-replacement specialist. Her name is Cass (after Mama Cass), and her sister is Lena (after Horne). Their parents were sad-sacks who never understood their daughters and whose only pleasure in life was Elvis. Our Father (as the girls called him) once worked as a roadie for an Elvis impersonator, and, when older daughter Lena was 18, on the tenth anniversary of Elvis’s death, he and Ma left home for parts unknown. Now, 18 years later, Lena still believes they may return. The more practical Cass thinks that’s hooey, but plays along because she feels sorry for Lena, who experiences panic attacks and hasn’t left the house in eight years, since her marriage ended badly. Suddenly, Cass has her own problem, a bump on her forehead that seemingly will grow into a horn. Any connection with her childhood fixation on rhinos, or even with Elvis’s rumored rhinoplasty? Wordplay and her metabolism dictate that she feel horny, like her boyfriend, Vance, who mounts her in a frenzy. Cass consults a dermatologist, then a surgeon, and she winds up in a nuthouse where all the patients have different animal parts, though otherwise the place seems like the same old refuge for writers stumped for inspiration: forbidding hallways, white coats. Elvis, whose spirit has hovered over every page, comes to Cass’s rescue. Once she dons his cape, proffered by a sympathetic nurse, she’s home free.
Foos strives for a light touch, but the recurrent references here (hair, feet, ham sandwiches, the allure of Jewry and Elvis trivia) seem more like nervous tics than prompts for a sympathetic chuckle.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-56689-168-X
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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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