At times endearing, at others perfunctory: an intriguing attempt to ponder big ideas in a small way.
Questions of identity, randomness, fate and sin collide in a curious tale of what makes an unremarkable Englishman’s life unique.
That life, belonging to “a man in late middle age” named James Watson Bolsover, is reviewed during a stormy ferry ride to an island on which he is to take up a new existence. Born of working-class parents, Bolsover was poorly educated but given to big questions. “How did I get here?” he wondered in 1954, when he was only ten. It’s the first of many philosophical enigmas to be debated in Corrick’s second novel (The Navigation Log, 2003) as he retraces his protagonist’s odyssey. Bolsover always tried to improve himself, reading widely. His passion for words led to a career as a technical writer, later success as a copywriter. Married to Kitty, who was initially frigid and nervous, he wooed her with storytelling that unleashed her passionate sexual nature. But Kitty died, leaving Bolsover lonely. One fateful snowy night, he had sex with a young prostitute and, driving away afterward, killed a child in a traffic accident. Now the trip to the island explains itself: Bolsover has served his sentence and been given a new identity to protect him from the threat of violence from the dead child’s father. Corrick’s affectionate depiction of a small English life sometimes recalls Mark Haddon, but the book also features surreal, symbolic touches. Its cast of enigmatic characters includes a ship’s captain, a young roller-blader and a birdwatcher. The parable-like tale concludes as Bolsover firmly steps toward the future, with all its uncertainties and possibilities.
At times endearing, at others perfunctory: an intriguing attempt to ponder big ideas in a small way.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-50813-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
APPRECIATIONS
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