The chronicle of Richard Nixon’s fall from power fits neatly into an engaging, bittersweet first novel about a boy eager to throw himself over the brink into adolescence, his Watergate-inspired spy capers revealing family secrets he’d rather not know. As an 11-year-old living in San Francisco in 1972, Jack Costello has ample opportunity to witness the polarity of American life. The neighbors on his middle-class street are hippies who throw their TV out in the street when Nixon is reelected and deface his father’s sports car with its proud little pro-Nixon bumper sticker. But the word —Watergate— is already in the air, and as Jack wonders what gives at his house—his frustrated-pianist father and frustrated-artist mother barely speak to each other, his teenage sister Macie has the mind of a five-year-old, and at breakfast the family’s randy monkey regularly humps one of their dogs—the unraveling of the Nixon era begins. During the ensuing two years, Jack discovers pot, Playboy pinups, and an ad for a listening device that he sends for and begins to use when his parents are on the phone. Transfixed by the Watergate hearings without knowing why, alienated from his friends for his own display of randiness, and befuddled by the knowledge that his father is having an affair, Jack just can’t deal with it all. Then, when further snooping shows him to be responsible for the long-ago accident that left Macie impaired, he all but shuts down; only an unexpectedly heroic act by his father brings a semblance of order to his life, allowing him to go on. The bravado and tentativeness of a child playing beyond his depth in an adult world ring out in exquisite combination here, while the political chords, perfectly pitched, color his transformation without swamping it. A most impressive debut.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18749-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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
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