by Lee D. Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2011
An earnest, if slow-paced, historical novel of Midwesterners.
Anderson offers a debut novel about life in northern Wisconsin in the early 1960s.
Albert “Sonny” Laärson is a 6-foot-2, 185-pound college quarterback with a quick arm and an insatiable appetite for sex. Sonny and his teammate cousin, John, seem to have little problem finding pleasure whenever they want it. The descriptions of their respective sexual conquests are full of straining genitals (“She stared at his erection with angry apprehension”) and explosive descriptions (“He drove himself hard into her and she bucked and moaned thrusting up to meet him”). But even though the lives of men like Sonny entail a good deal of womanizing, life for many other people in their Wisconsin hometown is often cruel and difficult—full of hard winters, violent “Kentucks,” and rough people who don’t think twice about using moonshine whiskey to clean the bile from their mouths. As a result, this novel explores much more than the life of a promiscuous young football player in an Oldsmobile Starfire; instead, it follows a multitude of characters as they work, feud, sleep together, and die. Some portions of the story are dedicated to earlier times of Swedish immigrants and Irish miners. Overall, this long novel is an illuminating exploration of its setting and its people. However, it’s also repetitive; the frequent “bucking and writhing” can be tedious at times, as can the descriptions of tough men “with wads of tobacco frozen in their cheeks.” The book is as raunchy as one might expect, given Sonny’s and John’s natures, and it also has its share of juvenile passages: “Charles…called Boner by his friends for obvious reasons, was a sleazeball…whose sole stated purpose for being was to deflower a fair young maiden.” Taken as a whole, though, the book effectively portrays a multifaceted time and place. Characters struggle with secrets and desperation, as in a late scene when Sonny finds himself in need of guidance: “Sonny was not a religious man but he felt that a little divine providence couldn’t hurt.” However, even the wide swath the novel cuts could have been cleaner, as it’s often burdened with mundane dialogue about such things as what people want for breakfast and how much snow has fallen.
An earnest, if slow-paced, historical novel of Midwesterners.Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-1453823019
Page Count: 644
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
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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
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