A complex story laid out with consummate skill and aimed directly at the powerful vortex where emotion and politics converge.
In a carefully researched first outing, Delahunt tells the story of Trotsky’s wait in a fortified Mexico City house for the arrival of Stalin’s assassins.
One of the brightest firebrands of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich) was drummed out of the country by his jealous enemy, Stalin, and now, amid a swirl of memories—of love, betrayal, and revolution—the last days of the revolutionst are related in a series of impressionistic pieces, some narrated by Trotsky himself, others by people who knew him. The timespan goes from Trotsky’s Ukrainian childhood in the late-19th century all the way up to the 1950s, years after his death, when the man who ordered his assassination, Joseph Stalin, lies dying in Moscow. The story begins with a recollection of his arrival in Mexico City, where he and his wife stayed with the flamboyantly emotional and political couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Along the way we hear from Trotsky’s farmer father; his wife; one of his bodyguards; the Soviet operative infiltrating Trotsky’s compound; a Mexican artist; Trotsky himself; and others. Delahunt’s command of her vast subject is most impressive indeed as she darts about from lazy days in Mexico City to the frozen steppes of Russia during the Civil War to the conspiracy-cloaked corridors of power in Moscow—all without batting an eye or even once muddying the narrative. The depth of research is astounding in a mapping-out of the volcanic passions and dark evils of the Revolution’s heroes and villains—especially Stalin’s near-Satanic henchman Beria.
A complex story laid out with consummate skill and aimed directly at the powerful vortex where emotion and politics converge.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-29106-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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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