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CANDY STORY

A pellucid fourth novel from a newly emergent French writer whose previous three (including Hìtel Splendid) were published together in English last year. Like those predecessors, Redonnet's chilling rÇcit appears to offer provocative pointillist segments of an ongoing fictive autobiography. It presents the first-person thought-meanderings of Mia, a 30ish writer whose vacillating urges to follow up the success of her autobiographical first novel are interrupted by the slow decline of her beloved ``Ma,'' now confined to a nursing home, and her own passive drifting in and out of inchoate relationships with admiring and compliant men. In reechoing sequences of errands and encounters, presented with Beckett-like spareness and clarity, we observe Mia's dreamy sublimation in the lives of family, colleagues, and lovers whose vocations (many are, or wish to be, writers) and fates (they seem surrounded, if not also linked, by the looming presence of immanent death) gradually reveal themselves as aspects of her own experiences and her fears of experiences to come. Her own disgruntled immersion in financial and legal responsibilities, for example, mirrors her mother's disappointed ``apprentice[ship] to a seamstress at the age of twelve when she had wanted to be a dancer''; her own writer's block is mocked by the fate of her dying friend, a self-indulgent American traveler who will never complete the ``transcendent poem'' he has dreamed of writing. Thus Redonnet builds a compelling picture of a writer who lives in, and as, the people who possess her imagination. Redonnet's bare-boned prose rises frequently to the level of haunting lyricism (``I spent the whole night by Ma's bed watching her, as she had watched me when I was a little girl afraid of dying in my sleep''). This short, unpretentious book offers a full and fascinating revelation of a complex sensibility, and further confirms the arrival of a major artist still in the making.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1995

ISBN: 0-8032-3915-7

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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