by Mick Cochrane ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2001
Appealing in its evocations of a Midwest from two or three decades ago, but at its foundation it remains more like a YA than...
Cochrane’s second (after Flesh Wounds, 1997), a tale of growing up trash-poor in the Midwest, is often rich in detail, but in its psychology it remains content with too little.
Harlan Hawkins is a junior high school kid in West St. Paul, Minnesota, who loves baseball, roots for the Twins, collects baseball cards, knows everything there is to know about both the game and its many players—and even plays himself, under the guidance of his kind and orderly history teacher and coach, Mr. Walker. But there’s plenty on the downside of Harlan’s life. A few years back, his mother developed multiple sclerosis and is now, though keeping her spiky attitudes and temperament, becoming badly degenerated from it. And now, unforgivably, his hard-drinking, short-fused, and hyperviolent father (a lawyer) walks out on the family (Harlan’s brother, Gerard, is slightly older) and almost immediately stops sending support money to them. The situation is dire and gets only worse as genuine poverty closes its fingers around the necks of the family. Cochrane gets all these details absolutely right, but, at the same time, his people don’t go deep or ring new. Harlan’s father is so vile as to be almost a cardboard villain. His mother is feisty, cynical, and quick—the heart of the story, really—but other elements simply remain more standard. Will teenaged brother Gerard continue his downward path to dissolution (tobacco, petty theft, etc.) and ruin? Will Harlan, a bright student who’s been taken under the wing of kind, good, concerned Mr. Walker, really apply to the ritzy private academy Mr. Walker himself (not quite believably) graduated from? And if Harlan does apply, will he get in? And if he gets in, will he attend?
Appealing in its evocations of a Midwest from two or three decades ago, but at its foundation it remains more like a YA than anything else.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26994-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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