Raphael's second book (Dancing on Tisha B'av, 1990)—a gay coming-of-age novel about a boy whose Jewish parents separate—is a competent account that becomes programmatic and tiresome, calling upon the Holocaust and the Sixties to spice up an all-too- predictable plot. Stefan Borowski's Polish immigrant parents are very secretive about their past. In fact, Stefan is never told he's Jewish until halfway through the book. As a small boy, he takes piano lessons from Uncle Sasha, who becomes his best friend and confidante. Meanwhile, odd clues about ``the War'' or ``the Germans'' are shovelled under the rug, and Stefan's irritable father finally leaves the family, first on a temporary basis and then for good. Stefan's mother goes back to school while Stefan spends an idyllic summer with Uncle Sasha before choosing to move in with him, grow his hair long, and become pals—innocent at first, then sexually involved—with Louis del Greco. The two of them experiment sexually for a time; then Stefan, by now in college, tries to deny his sexual orientation and hang out with Jenny, who gets him caught up in antiwar demonstrations before a bathroom mugging cures him of radical notions. When he fails at sex with Jenny, he goes back temporarily to gay sex, visits his mother, and begins to dread his father's impending wedding to a second wife. By story's end, Stefan is sleeping with Marsha, who also goes both ways, but he's still a lost soul who's not come to terms with either his Jewishness or his homosexuality. The novel, unfortunately, seems as unformed and tentative as Stefan. The whole never coheres, so we have to settle for a sometimes touching but mostly tedious narrative that promises more than it delivers.
Pub Date: Nov. 23, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-08338-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
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
BOOK REVIEW
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