Chernoff (American Heaven, 1996, etc.) describes an intractable tragedy—a young boy unintentionally murders another—with much accuracy and feeling but offers only a narrative shrug when parting with the reader. The boy is 12-year-old Danny, and his victim is Eddie Nova. While goofing off alone in Danny’s house one afternoon, Eddie produces his crossbow and begins pointing it around the living room. Horrified, Danny seizes the weapon, the loaded bow goes off in the struggle, and Eddie is shot through the heart. Danny’s mother, Nancy, opens the story by recounting her conflicted emotions, her sense of personal guilt, and the opacity of tragedy. “We burn for love,” she sighs in one of Chernoff’s poetic aphorisms, “but we only consent to being burned in its absence.” Nancy’s position is complicated because she’s fallen in love with Frank Nova, Eddie’s father and husband to Marilyn. Frank, a paramedic, escapes an emotionally arid marriage by finding relief with Nancy. Naturally devastated by the accident, he inexplicably (though he means no harm) kidnaps Danny after his release from an institution where Danny has told his version of the events while under “observation.” Chernoff’s desire to provide intuitive childlike insights falters here, with passages that are simply childlike. The three come together for the final scene, at a Wisconsin cabin where Frank is hiding with Danny. Along the way, a handful of peripheral characters are inadequately evoked: Marilyn, a cheerleader type not prepared for unhappiness; Riley, an older Irish immigrant who steadies Nancy in her encounter with tragedy; and Ronnie, Frank’s brother, a troubled Vietnam vet who’s a shadow around the edges of the story. The dead hard weight of irredeemable loss lies deep at the center of this evocatively written, ultimately perplexed account, and pulls its meanings down into a darkness that remains unresolved for the reader.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60522-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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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