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FLESH WOUNDS

In Cochrane's closely observed and confident first novel, three generations of a Minneapolis family struggle to regain equilibrium after the clan's patriarch is arrested for sexually abusing his granddaughter. Hal Lamm, a 60ish grandfather and salesman, is arrested for having molested 13-year-old Becky. The charges are corroborated by Hal's grown daughter Ellie, who tells the police about her own history of abuse by Hal; meanwhile, Maureen, another daughter, keeps quiet. Hal hires a good lawyer and gets off with probation, but the family can no longer sustain its denial. Becky stops eating meat and dutifully attends sessions with a psychologist, while her parents impose a big birthday party on her complete with kids she doesn't know and inappropriately lavish presents. At the same time, Ellie has a hard time sharing her agitation with her lumbering but sensitive husband: The incident has awakened both good and bad childhood memories, reigniting her rage at her father and also at her mother, Phyllis, who never believed her daughter's complaints. Now, Phyllis sleepwalks her way to Partners of Offenders meetings and contends with unfamiliar stomach pains until she numbly manages to file for a divorce. Calvin, the youngest Lamm son, is furiously determined to keep his own daughter, Grace, away from his dad. And so on: The siblings, their spouses, and children come together to help Phyllis sell the family house, in the process fumbling toward new trust. They'll all be tested once again when it's discovered that Phyllis is suffering from cancer. The recovery-from-child-abuse drama is less noteworthy here than the subtle, moving portrait of family secrets, hidden angers, and tentative forgiveness. Cochrane achieves cool control with carefully constructed scenes that yield small, psychologically resonant moments, lending weight and unpredictability to material that's potentially hackneyed.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997

ISBN: 0-385-48661-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997

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THE SECRET HISTORY

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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OF MICE AND MEN

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define.  Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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