Self-indulgent underbelly-of-life saga about two small-time crooks who weave their way from New York to Baltimore to the South before blowing each other away. Bell's saving graces—gritty texture and occasional hard-boiled stylishness—aren't enough to save this one. Macrae, our hero, likes to hang out in Battery Park with Charlie, a near-psychotic, and sidle up to yuppies with cash cards, use their cards to the limit, then drink or shoot up the proceeds before doing it again. (Macrae also carries a sketch pad with him and draws things and has a heart of gold.) The novel's first movement reaches its tedious end when Macrae takes vengeance on a pimp (who's blown away a prostitute friend) by beating him to pulp with a baseball bat. Then Macrae and Charlie hightail it in the first of dozens of stolen cars. With Porter, a black ex-con, junkie, and all-around dispenser of wisdom along for the ride, they steal guns, commit armed robberies, and generally raise hell until they reach the backcountry South, where Macrae runs into Lacy, his old girlfriend. Trouble is, Macrae doesn't get it on with Lacy, so Charlie boffs her while Macrae does chores, milks cows, looks into haying. There's more armed robbery and good-old-boy goings-on, but everything gets worked out after high-speed car chases and fireplay when Charlie tries to blow Macrae to kingdom come but gets blown away himself—just in time for Lacy and Macrae to exchange looks ``as if they were seeing each other for the first time in their lives.'' Even worse, Bell (Doctor Sleep, 1991, etc.) plagiarizes and parodies his earlier self at several turns. Readers would do better to turn to Richard Price's Clockers, and Bell would be better served if he stayed with shorter forms, where the need to compress and shape allows his considerable talent to shine.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-15-179432-4
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
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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