Entertaining in fits and starts.
Two Rhode Island potentates, one fading, one in the ascendant, wreak varying forms of mischief on a dark corner of New Hampshire, and a mousy bank employee discovers her inner exhibitionist.
In The Egg Code (2002), Heppner tackled the Internet and the American mind. The targets are a little (but not a lot) more manageable here as the friends and enemies of Nathaniel Pike, one of America’s richest men, try to figure out what fabulous—or fabulously nefarious—idea he has in mind for the seven-and-a-half acres of White Mountain wilderness he’s just purchased from the federal government. What he has in mind is a bit of grand-scale Dadaist installation. He’s going to level his bit of forest and put in a completely inaccessible parking lot. It’s all perfectly legal, but it is enough to send the local environmentalists into seizures. Heppner’s characters are oddballs and hangers-on, the oddest being his factotum, Stuart Breen. Stuart, the author of a disregarded novel, has been distracted from his usual efficiency by his entry into the nerve-wracking world of exhibitionism, for which the tour guide has been Stuart’s mousy wife, Marlene. The couple have been stripping to the buff in all sorts of inappropriate places, and Stuart occasionally waves his willy independently. Nearby, the closeted, patrician Gregg Reese maneuvers toward public subsidy of the family charitable fund he and his bossy mother have managed to deplete entirely in their support of civic goodness. Gregg’s daughter Allison and her moviemaking boyfriend Heath have drifted into Pike’s orbit. Heath soon turns his lens on the kinky life of Marlene Breen, and Allison has a fling with the anti-development forces who will shift into high gear as Pike appends a completely equipped K-Mart to his paved wilderness. Oh, and the wicked origins of the Reese fortune come to light.
Entertaining in fits and starts.Pub Date: March 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-41289-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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