Dribs and drabs of blackish comedy, poorly seasoned.
Murder and bad cooking make for surprisingly cozy bedfellows.
It’s not exactly the most promising of setups for first-novelist Lang. Henry Blain is a white-haired old gent, the chief cook at Strangeways prison, but he hasn’t been able to go to work for some time because the 1,600-odd prisoners are rioting. He can see the action pretty well from his house, whose view he’s currently leasing out to members of the media desperate for a good view of the chaos. While there are news reports aplenty about what’s happening inside Strangeways, the reader never gets a firsthand glimpse of them, stuck instead inside Henry’s meandering mind, which is obsessed mostly with thoughts of revenge and musings on his favorite writer, Shakespeare. We find out that he was once a ship’s cook in the merchant marine and given to expressing his displeasure at the crew members (over a rude word, insolent look, or pretty much anything) by lacing the food with laxatives or other unpleasant additives. This is a habit he apparently has continued in his work at Strangeways, and certain messages communicated by the rioters to the outside world indicate that Henry’s wretched grub was one of the reasons (maybe the main one) for their taking over the prison. Although a septuagenarian, Henry still has a pretty active sex life, the more recent examples of which provide some lusty interludes (with one of the reporters renting out space in his house) in what is otherwise a fairly tedious piece of work. It’s not that Lang doesn’t have an interesting character in mind; with his mixed loves of Shakespeare, sex, and making people ill (not to mention suggestions of murderous impulses); it’s that Henry should be a devilishly entertaining person. Lang, however, never builds up any sort of momentum here, letting the scenes fall where they will without much to back them up.
Dribs and drabs of blackish comedy, poorly seasoned.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-75381-413-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Phoenix/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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