by Michael Allin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2001
A first novel from screenwriter Allin (Zarafa, 1998) that’s more predictable than picaresque.
College kid in a Santa suit hitchhikes home for Christmas, meets colorful characters, cops give chase. Southern California has its charms, but Casey Rickert is determined to get back to Kansas City even if it means stashing his surfboard and not handing in the Lit paper his long-suffering girlfriend has refused to write for him. He shows up at a backroom poker game in a sleazy bar, hoping to score some fast cash for the trip, but he’s broke within two hours. A cartoon Mexican with a knife and a gold tooth relieves him of his plane ticket and gives him the bum’s rush. Later, chased by a clerk for shoplifting, he boosts a Santa suit from a mannequin in a town display and heads on down the road. He’s picked up by assorted semi-crazy California types, spends a night in the arms of a lady who owns an avocado ranch, then scrams when the jealous husband with his dog Killer make an unexpected appearance. And so it goes. The road trip high-jinks are interwoven with fond memories of Casey’s dead brother Davy and Davy’s girlfriend Fred or Ricky, variously (short for Frederica) and their little son and what good times they all had in Kansas City, where life is a lot more real. Getting as far as Las Vegas, courtesy of a crazy guy in a Corvette, Casey is waylaid by a late-night radio and TV team planning a honk-if-you-love-Santa-thon for desert denizens—ramblers, gamblers, etc. He eludes them all and is borne aloft by an Indian in a stolen plane that crashes in a snowdrift not far from his Kansas City home, where he is reunited with his family—and the ghost of his dead brother.
A first novel from screenwriter Allin (Zarafa, 1998) that’s more predictable than picaresque.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26663-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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