Imagine identifying with a protagonist living on the streets and rocky ledges of East L.A., sustaining himself on wine, dope, and French bread. A bit hard to fathom? By the time David Thorne hits the streets in this book's third section, it seems exactly what we might do in his shoes. But to retrace our steps: This impressive first novel by Vietnam veteran Cooper begins in 1967. A high school genius, Thorne, the first in his family to attend college, drops out after one semester. He works in a factory, gets sent to Vietnam, comes back to the streets. As readers understand before the protagonist does, each stage is worse than the last. Thorne's most appealing characteristic is his normalcy: He's in the war, thrust into terrifying situations, yet his actions and reactions are very much as we imagine our own might be. And a sense of humor makes him almost endearing. Piecing together dead bodies, for example, he holds a finger to his nose and smells Chanel No. 5. Impeccably paced, the combination of boy and man is particularly apt. In a mud-filled river, the sole survivor of his company, he has the wherewithal to tie the dead men's ponchos together to make a raft, braving current and branches, talking to his dead friends as he goes along. The next section begins: ``Being alone is scary.'' The book's tripartite structure works perfectly. Action- filled battle scenes in part two are astutely contrasted with boredom at the factory in part one. It is this long middle section that carries the whole. Here, in focused chapters, complete in themselves yet unified by tone, Cooper gives vivid portraits of the people in the Vietnamese landscape, men who brave the heat, fear for their lives, rape, murder, commit suicide, and deal dope. Hundreds of adjectives could be used to describe this novel: calm, lyrical, poetic, sensitive, tender.... All seem like misnomers. All fit.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-880684-19-5
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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