Willis (Only Great Changes, 1985, etc.) offers a pleasant enough potpourri of short stories for lazy hot nights on the back porch rocker, reflecting what's important to their Appalachian characters: living and dying and the proper telling of both. The collection begins with a nonfiction piece that reads almost as a disclaimer: Shed city expectations when you read these- -they are meant to amble through country minutiae and may not pack a punch at the end. In fact, the warning is unnecessary—most of the stories that follow err on the side of being too sophisticated or airtight. The rural mentality resonates in other ways: The ambitions of the characters are as small as the towns they inhabit; blood is thicker than water; education is anomalous; and immortality is won by raising decent children, obeying Christ, and keeping your integrity. These folks don't have much control over the world, but they are determined to remain the sovereigns of their lives. In ``My Boy Elroy,'' an elderly shopkeeper who has lived honestly and eschewed debt fends off the ruffians at her door with sharp wits and a refusal to compromise herself. Similarly, in ``Adventures of the Vulture,'' a dotty old woman known as ``the funeral lady'' plans her own service in a letter to the funeral parlor director so that she will control her destiny. While content is consistent, the forms of the stories vary widely. There is a country yarn, a series of monologues with alternating viewpoints, a letter, and traditional stories focusing on dialogue, description, and meaningfulness (sometimes too strenuously). Of the latter, ``Family Knots,'' where life's passages are measured in the stitches of quilts, is notable. The earth won't move for readers of this modest collection, but the clouds above it will drift slowly and congenially by for a couple of hours.
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1994
ISBN: 1-56279-066-8
Page Count: 180
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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