Modestly successful some while back (last Kirkus appearance: The Siege of Wonder, 1976), Geston returns with a heavy near-future alien-contact/alien-art yarn. When humanlike ``gods''—resembling idealized people but with ichor in their veins—appear in huge spaceships in the skies of Earth, reaction is muted and watchful. In Washington, the aliens set up an art gallery; the pictures combine supergenius technique with super-Rorschach impact and suggestiveness, and spark riots. Many are killed, but the gods bring diplomat Andrew Cavan's son back to life. A friendly god artist, Rane, whose painting ``The Death of Blake'' is one of the most powerful in the gallery, explains: A triptych painted by the god Blake predicts with utter certainty that within two centuries the gods will meet and be destroyed by another alien race. Since Blake, then, they've been searching the galaxy for their nemesis. Eventually the aliens leave, abandoning a number of dedicated workers and some political dissidents, taking with them a number of human volunteers, including Andrew Cavan. Surprisingly, one ship returns to Earth; it transpires that god dissidents stole the original triptych and hid it on Earth; the gods want it back. Meanwhile, government investigator Marinetti searches for gods abandoned on Earth, hoping to learn their secrets; Rane, one of the dissidents, paints another masterpiece instructing the humans aboard the gods' vessel how to win the inevitable struggle. The aliens fail to convince, either as aliens or as metaphor (if such was intended). Neither does the flimsy, incoherent plot or glum, juiceless narrative help. But it's the lack of a character- -any character, let alone a sympathetic one—that finally does this one in.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-11138-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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
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