Britisher Westlake makes his US fiction debut with a tale that's exasperating and brilliant by turns: as 12 masterpieces of art ``tell'' the story of two lovers in Paris who are inadvertently mixed up in a grand forgery. Looking at passerby Joel in the rearview mirror instead of paying attention to her driving, Alyx runs over a number of pet dogs—but no matter, since a new romance is off and running. Alyx, it turns out, is a painter hard at work on ``reoriginations'' of the same 12 paintings that scholar Joel has written about in a book called Articulations. And you could almost say that that's about it for story. There'll be a new baby at the close, and along the way certain adventures with ex-wife Lulu, who earns her absurdist name almost as perfectly as does her immeasurably rich art-collector mother. As for the rest of things, there's the mystery of which talking masterpiece is actually a forgery—the answer coming only after the unexpected inheritance (by Joel) of CÇzanne's Apples and Oranges, the hideous vandalism and then complete disappearance of same, not to mention a footnote or two in New York and near-death on a foot trek across snow-driven Alps. All good high fun, ending with a snaggle of numerology that will please some, enrage others, baffle more. As will the tedious ``talking'' of the paintings—who go on endlessly about which pronouns to use in ``telling your story''—and the horrific excerpts from Joel's book (``Thus the body becomes a bifurcation set, a zone of undecidability between two incommensurate orders, either a flux of biochemical functions or a socially determined semiotic field'')—all vindicated slightly by those who catch a passing allusion to Tristram Shandy, the greatest ``cock-and-bull story'' of them all. Genius mixed with tedium. The former wins over the latter, but finding this out is a rare chore indeed.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15678-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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