A German painter of great critical and commercial renown is given a year's use of a tower in southwest France. From its vantage he plans to paint four large paintings of the seasons; these he will give to the tower's owner, a rich German collector, while he himself reaps the sketchwork of a communion-with-nature experience that he hopes will dispel the cynicism he feels about art, his included. But once in the tower, the painter is blocked, finds himself translating Dante instead of sketching and subject to afternoons of drinking too much in the local cafes. In one of these he is witness to a domestic disagreement of a likewise-German-speaking couple. The man stalks off (in fact, leaves town altogether); the woman befriends the painter; they sleep together—and she also disappears, stealing the painter's car. Then the man's picture shows up in the newspapers as a suspect in the murder of a Toulouse policeman. These two shadowy figures will play in and out of the painter's consciousness thereafter- -leading him to the depths and, finally, possible salvation. KrÅger's hardly subtle Dante-esque allegory, however (``The deeper I penetrated the graphic execution of Paradise, the more invisible my opponent became''), is supported more by cinder-block-like opinions about art-world sociology than by any plot per se: ``Why, precisely, should I deliver a program so that, from the misery they had brought on themselves in the eighties with their repulsive dazzling pretentiousness, they might find a path whose appellation would be somewhat more enduring than the concepts they had given themselves in recent years of economically successful indolence?'' (An unfortunate translation of an unfortunate sentence.) In only one scene—the painter being visited by a sausage-maker collector from Germany—does KrÅger (The End of the Novel, 1992) write a bit of a novel here. Elsewhere, it's all leaden meditation, jeremiad, and shadow-play.
Pub Date: March 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-8076-1297-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Braziller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
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
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