Retired after 32 years as a freshman comp instructor, Lehman could easily have titled his winning, experimental work The...
A folksy debut poignantly and humorously renders the vernacular of small-town Ohio.
Once readers get over the initial shock of Lehman’s creatively misspelled phonetics, their euphonious rhythm makes perfect sense. In rural Granton, Ohio, during the mid-1980s, 34-year-old Lori, “a fine focksy lady” who works at the local hospital, gets along modestly with her two daughters. Mariah (“already in addlelessons”) and eight-year-old Carrie Ann (“the brane’s around here”) have to tolerate Lori’s vulgar new boyfriend, Roy—“bad news like most of her mothers boyfriends,” according to the younger sister, who is onto his empty pockets and swagger. Lori’s brother Mocky, a French professor in Columbus, is coming to stay for the summer, which is rather mysterious; he hasn’t visited for years due to a falling-out with their father, Papaw. Kindly, bald, mustachioed Mocky is just what Carrie Ann needs for a playmate. While sulky teenager Mariah shirks babysitting duty, slipping out with her sleazy boyfriend, Carrie Ann and Mocky amuse themselves grandly at the drive-in, the “put-put” golf course and the fair. In a fit of drunken anger, Roy reveals to Carrie Ann the shocking truth of Mocky’s sexual preference. “Roy told me your a sissy boy and a dirty pet-her-ass,” she says, sending Mocky sadly away. Yet after Papaw’s death, Mocky returns for the funeral, and the motley group begins to function as a family when Lori reveals that she is pregnant with Roy’s baby. It may be slender, but this short “novelette” conveys a full-fleshed humanity, thanks to the author’s savory use of language.
Retired after 32 years as a freshman comp instructor, Lehman could easily have titled his winning, experimental work The English Teacher’s Revenge.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-9770326-2-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Possum Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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
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