Williams, who was a social worker for 20 years, creates a self-modeled protagonist in this debut collection—a semiautobiographical gathering of 15 interrelated stories. The author has an ultracasual, conversational tone and a quirky sense of humor that infuse the best of these pieces; when her wit and low-key style fail her, though, the pieces seem merely didactic. The first, the title story, introduces the narrator, Joan, and her best friend Evangeline ``Vange'' Kuhlman—both social workers at a rehabilitation agency for the blind. The special friendship between the two becomes a focal point of the tales; the theme of universal disability becomes another, as Joan, who, among other things, suffers from tendinitis, respiratory problems, and insomnia, and Vange, who is blind and obese, triumph over their personal obstacles to help others understand that a handicap is only a handicap when you allow it to be one. ``Miracle'' is more a musing than a story (which Williams herself points out in another, referential piece), this concerning Joan's distaste for dwarves, who ``freak [her] out.'' More successful is ``Ho-Ghay-Loo-Ees-Bor- G-Hais,'' a both literary and clever piece in which the narrator/author manages to make Borges accessible and comprehensible in just a few brushstrokes. In the concluding story, ``Book of Dreams,'' however, Williams goes sappy with strained folksy references to Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie (``All of the secret dreams and their dreamers clasp hands in a long chain . . . and we dance''). The overarching theme is clearly that all of us are handicapped in some way, and that it's wisest to accept our traits, no matter how ``society'' perceives them, and embrace them as essential to our true selves. The line here between fiction and autobiography is too often blurred, with Joan seeming more mouthpiece than fleshed-out, convincing character.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56689-047-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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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