The first volume of a proposed trilogy, Serbian writer Tsernianski's rather old-fashioned historical novel (set in the 18th century, written in 1929) focuses on the absurd cruelties history inflicts on private life. The action commences in the spring of 1744, when the Slavonian-Danubian Regiment begins its exhausting service in the Austro-Hungarian war against France. Serbian officer Vuk Isakovic leaves his pregnant wife, Dafina, and three young daughters with his merchant brother in order to lead 300 village soldiers to the Lorraine campaign. They crisscross Europe, experiencing exhilaration, fatigue, and humiliation, while at home Dafina, seduced by her brother-in-law, experiences a hallucination in which she sees the decomposed body of her husband. She subsequently dies from complications following a miscarriage. The Serb regiment, capriciously overseen by Austrian commanders, suffers wretchedly, and grim images of Dafina's rotting, empty womb underscore the desolation experienced on the battlefront. The volume concludes one year later, when Vuk returns to his brother's house and dreams about migrating to Russia. The author constructs much of his melodramatic narrative as a series of painterly tableaux vivants, with the most graphic scenes depicting grotesque spectacles of military cruelty, including the bleeding, swollen, and disfigured bodies of mutilated soldiers. The undercurrent of authorial irony is particularly effective when it concentrates on Dafina, who serves as a specter of magic, irrationality, and sexuality. Though hardly a groundbreaking work even in 1929, the book displays flashes of mastery and provides a certain amount of insight into the antecedents of the turmoil in Serbia today.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-159556-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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
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