A movie novel of tremendous sweep and detail, zapping us with the America of the Thirties and Forties as seen through the eyes of gossip-monger Walter Winchell. Herr, the jivey author of Dispatches (1977), undertakes a spacious picture of US society in pre- and post-WW II and nails it all down in 156 pages. This tour de force presents itself as a movie script, with synoptic montages, scene cuts, and dialogue in script form. Its compression releases a great brio to the page, sends a flow of images racing over the reader's mind, and strips to bare bone a form first handled by John Steinbeck in his novelizations of The Moon Is Down and Of Mice and Men. All these storytelling smarts would get Herr by on their own, but he reaches masterfully beyond mere form by invoking our sympathy for the kind of "great villain" Henry Fielding drew so delightfully in Jonathan Wild Few would think that Broadway columnist Walter Winchell would lend himself to such treatment. But Herr limns Citizen Winchell from childhood to old age with deep understanding, and achieves a peak of pure energy with Winchell lording it at the Stork Club and rat-a-tat-tatting his radio show. Not only does Winchell stride off the page with his compulsions edged and shaded to perfection, but his cronies as well receive strong treatment: affecting scenes abound with Winchell's great buddy sportswriter Damon Runyon, Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, and press agent Irving Hoffman (read Irving "Swifty" Lazar?) that ink themselves forever into memory—as does Herr's brilliantly realized Chorus of Press Agents groveling at Walter's feet when he is King and bad-mouthing him when he is at last a wandering Broadway ghost. Sumptuous entertainment.
Pub Date: May 18, 1990
ISBN: 0679733930
Page Count: 157
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1990
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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