Krekorian's first novel (winner of the Plover Nivola Contest) aims considerably higher than its author can reach and serves as a useful reminder that good prose cannot be fashioned from bad poetry. At some indeterminate date in an unimaginable future, society has triumphed over the natural world to such a degree that work as we know it is almost entirely unnecessary and most lives are given over wholly to the pursuit of distraction and pleasure. Zero Coupon, our hero, is a sort of advertising pimp who panders to the desires of the masses, desires that he invents and manipulates to serve his own ends. If his ends are less than clear, and if the exact nature of his services remain shadowy from beginning to end, that probably has more to do with Krekorian's prose style than his intentions—though it would be hard to say which is murkier. From the very first line (``Autumn in Los Angeles: a season for discounts. Hey, it's a jingle out there''), we're treated to an elaborate double-talk constructed largely of parodies of advertising copy. It is in fact unclear whether anything is happening at all, and the entire story may simply be an interior monologue that Zero ends as abruptly as he began. While there are other characters, we rarely learn their names and they never appear more than once, so they function more as dream figures than actual narrative forces. Similarly, Zero's elaborate meditations on everything from sex (``Frequent sexual contact with strangers causes amnesia'') to investments (``Gentlemen prefer bonds'') are sporadic and unfocused, amounting in the end to more of a ramble than a rant. Lacking the obsessiveness of a Miller or a Burroughs, Krekorian can give us only those predecessors' egomania and confusions, with little to tease us along and nothing at the center of the mess. Pretentious nonsense.
Pub Date: May 30, 1996
ISBN: 0-917635-19-1
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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
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