A slight, charming, gravely loopy bit of whimsy equally likely to appeal to amateur etymologists, untenured academics,...
Martin (Paradise Dogs, 2011) presents a medical mystery in which the detective is also the victim of a rare and deeply threatening malady: loss of self.
Even before his self-alienation, grammarian Bone King is living a life of quiet desperation. His status as a lecturer at Atlanta’s Fulsome College is marginal at best. His first book, Misplaced Modifiers, seems to have sunk without a trace, and he’s so far behind on Words that his editor has stopped reading his incomplete drafts and his dissertation committee has basically given up on him. Lately he’s been worried that Mary Snyder, the former student he married, is carrying on an affair with yardman Cash Hudson. But none of these stresses seem adequate to predict Bone’s sudden, inexplicable inability to go through open doors. He brushes off an initial attack that sends him to the emergency room but after an embarrassingly inconvenient recurrence, agrees to consult the eminent neurologist/psychiatrist Dr. Limongello, whom everyone describes as an eccentric who can work miracles. The eccentric part is certainly on the money, as Bone realizes when Limongello tells him, sagely but obscurely, “Your condition’s root cause is a disjunction between how your hormones tell you to feel and a decent human response,” and advises him to try dancing through doorways he can’t walk through. Though Bone is no dancer, he does succeed in square-dancing his way through a number of stasis-inducing doorways and take on board some surprisingly effective longer-range advice from Limongello before an unfortunate series of events brings on a crisis that’s both unique and deeply expressive of the kinds of self-alienation many readers will recognize.
A slight, charming, gravely loopy bit of whimsy equally likely to appeal to amateur etymologists, untenured academics, spouses who fear cuckolding, and anyone who’s ever woken up with the feeling that they aren’t quite themselves.Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60953-141-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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