A promising if taxing debut by playwright Medoff (Children of a Lesser God, etc.) about a young Jewish playwright who does his best to make a mess of his life and then hangs in there long enough to sort it out. Jake Landau is an English grad student at Stanford when things start going wrong—or right (it's sometimes hard to tell which is which here)—and Leslie Ann Masterson, an aspiring actress, walks into his life. They glom onto each other as if Crazy Glued, but Jake notices some strange things: she wants him to sleep with her disabled friend, conceals her real name, and secretly meets with a car salesman who turns out to be her stepfather. Gradually the ugly truths dribble out—i.e., that Leslie Ann's mother committed suicide and that she was sexually abused by both her father and her stepfather. So, because Jake's too immature and Leslie Ann's simply too weird to handle a relationship, they split, with Jake going home to Miami Beach, where he gets engaged to an old girlfriend named Sandra while fending off a passel of crazy (and very funny) relatives. For a while Jake and Sandra try to make a life in the Southwest, where he's got a teaching job and his first play is produced. But both of them have affairs, and only the play prevails. It's moved to New York, where Medoff pulls off his hyperventilating climax—which includes the reappearance of Leslie Ann (about to deliver Jake's baby), good reviews for the show, and a revelation from Jake's dad about just how he spent the Holocaust. There's enough here for five years of a TV series, and a slight but insistent scent of therapy pervades. But Medoff's characters do have flesh on their bones, and his comic gift is undeniable. So if he gets a pair of shears and simplifies, his next book could be a joy.
Pub Date: June 11, 1992
ISBN: 0-446-51597-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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