A decades-old, honest love story that never feels like merely a time capsule.
A Jersey Shore romance kindled in the swinging 1970s still smolders when old lovers come together in 2008.
Ronny Hopkins has long pined after his neighbor Katie Kline, the two young Belmar, New Jersey, natives often sharing time together over a little weed and “The White Album.” But Katie is a thoughtful girl, still affected by Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in ’68, moved to explore the issues of the tumultuous era she is growing up in, and charmed by the adult allure of New York but also Ronny’s father. Although their adulterous affair is quickly recognized as a mistake, their liaison leaves behind a handful of nude Polaroids of Katie, which Ronny finds hidden away with his father’s dirty magazines. Yet when Ronny confronts her, the two make love. But a relationship seems untenable, as Katie stays busy paying her dues writing obits for the Village Voice, graduating to chasing stories for the newspaper, while Ronny relaxes on the Jersey Shore, working as a lifeguard and spending his nights at local bars. Worse, Katie struggles with panic attacks, and Ronny’s resentment over her past and present experiences sometimes culminates in violent or jealous outbursts. Distance, family deaths, and other love interests soon pull them apart, but when they reunite for a day in 2008, the remnants of their time together—not naked photographs but his unanswered love letters—promise to remind them of what they once were. Bennett (Summer Mirrors, 2015, etc.) returns to Belmar to tell a warts-and-all love story spanning decades, deftly breaking down the small moments that form long, awkward relationships. The first half of the novel is presented in fast-paced snippets of character and conversation. The dialogue is quick and relies heavily on the two protagonists’ understanding of each other, with their interactions full of in-jokes, slang, and references to their time together. There are recognizable hallmarks to differentiate the ’70s from the modern day, with numerous nods to the music, drug culture, and celebrities, and in the 2000s, that period’s technology. The book’s second half, taking place over a shorter amount of time, slows the pace considerably but keeps the engrossing tale’s most important aspect alive, its delicate switching between Ronny’s and Katie’s points of view.
A decades-old, honest love story that never feels like merely a time capsule.Pub Date: June 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947021-22-8
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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