Angst echoes through the interior spaces of five characters, four family members and a family friend, as each seeks to define his or her sexual identity and position relative to the others: a probing, unsettling, but finally unsatisfying third novel from Erhart (Augusta Cotton, 1992, etc.). The Haases, living in a New Jersey suburb in the late '60s, seem unremarkable, entirely average. But are they? Brighton, the younger child, is withdrawn and silent, the result of falling through an pond ice in his youth; he's been in psychotherapy ever since. His sister Helen is better adjusted initially, but in time, as the family self-destructs, she too withdraws. Father Frank is sympathetic, dutiful, yet remarkable mostly for his absence: his dead-end job consumes him. This leaves frustrated, sexually ambiguous Tommie to shoulder an enormous burden as wife and mother. She leans on neighbor Hal, a close college friend (once a lover), for support, but Hal has his own cross to bear: He endures a six- month marriage before coming out, only to find he's no judge of character in choosing companions of either sex. Then Tommie takes to drink and drives into a stone wall on the night of the 40th- birthday party Hal's thrown for her. Head injuries alter her personality, or at least make her no longer willing to endure her family; she decamps in short order to live first with ex-roommate Jeanne Ann (also once her lover), then in a succession of women's communities from Oregon to Vermont. The children finish growing up without her, Helen denying her sexuality utterly while Brighton, having moved in with Hal in Manhattan—as a friend, not a partner- -goes his own way sexually. The tangle of relationships as well as the battered, withered roots of the Haas family tree are exposed carefully but relentlessly, with the grueling process giving about as much pleasure as a tooth extraction.
Pub Date: May 12, 1996
ISBN: 1-883642-07-8
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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