An elegant but lifeless stories held prisoner by an idea—in this case, the long shadow cast by the war.
A finely crafted if emotionally cool exploration of a legacy of wartime guilt, a burden lifted only when a retired Dutch-born entomologist meets an antique dealer with her own sorrows.
Tristan Martens is an authority on beetles. He lives alone in a Manhattan apartment filled with cases of specimens he has collected. Since his bypass surgery, he’s acutely conscious of his scarred body, but even more troubled by his psychic scars. His marriage has ended, and his wife now lives with his born-again son Christopher—more a concept than a credible character—who sends ranting messages urging Tristan to repent. In the end-zone of his life, Tristan is in sore need of solace, which he finds when he goes into an antique store and sees his mother’s old sewing table. The proprietor, Cora Lowenstein, refuses to sell it because it serves as a necessary reminder of her past. She tells him that the table, which belonged to her husband’s aunt, a Jew in hiding during WWII, bears on its underside in a childlike hand an inscription in Dutch: “When the Jews are gone, we will be the next ones.” Cora interprets this as a warning, but Tristan knows it’s true, and more vicious, meaning. Planning to steal the table, he becomes involved with Cora, taking her to lunch, meeting her for coffee, and accompanying her as she visits her hospitalized husband, now in a coma. These meetings inevitably evoke painful memories of his father, a Dutch Nazi, and his older sister, a Hitler Youth who responded to his family’s imprisonment for their collaboration by committing suicide. Haunted by his family’s complicity, Tristan finally finds peace as he confesses his past to Cora, who has crises of her own to face.
An elegant but lifeless stories held prisoner by an idea—in this case, the long shadow cast by the war.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14805-1
Page Count: 227
Publisher: BlueHen/Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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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