No plot but plenty of attitude is what you get from Newton's rambling first novel about a gifted but feckless black high- schooler who would rather hit the streets than the books. The streets, in fact, are where we first meet Lucas Martin, who, driving the getaway car for his buddy Roar, is about to rip off a transvestite hooker in their Long Island town. Scene two: Lucas, at home, having cunningly induced a visionary high, is lollygagging with God and Satan, two dirty old white men (``We like perverts,'' says God). A flashy start? Not really. The street action is basically confined to one paragraph, and Lucas's conversation with God and Satan (who will make further brief appearances) is handled too erratically to be outrageous. What follows is the routine story of a teenager fighting his family and himself. Lucas's mother died in childbirth, and Lucas was raised absent-mindedly by his cab-driver father Zeke. Father and son would get drunk together until Zeke's recent marriage to nurse Elaine (``Mothernurse,'' Lucas calls her contemptuously). Now Zeke is on the wagon and Lucas is catching hell for skipping classes so he can hang out with the self-destructive Roar or lose himself in music (he plays piano and sax). His acquisition of a girlfriend (Deana, the Afrocentric daughter of a college professor) only intensifies his conflicts, since he is still drawn to wild man Roar; but while Lucas strikes adolescent poses (``Dying tonight wouldn't be so bad''), Roar goes all the way and blows his brains out. Too inward-looking and disorganized to be a success, but Newton's easy way with language—whether of the streets or the salon—indicates a protean talent worth watching.
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93754-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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