A slim and moody third novel by author and movie-director Jordan resembles his film The Crying Game with its unusual and highly personalized sense of Irish politics. And like his earlier film, The Miracle, this tale of betrayal and redemption delves into the tragic consequences of family secrets. Motherless since youth, Donal Gore grows up in the shadow of his father, a member of the Protestant Ascendancy who converted to Catholicism and took up the Republican cause during the War for Independence. Afterward, the senior Donal became a Free-Stater, willing to compromise for a stable government. What really bothers young Donal is having to compete with his father's claims to Donal's piano tutor, a beautiful redhead named Rose DeVrai. Having practiced lovemaking with his male buddy, Mouse, Donal finally seduces Rose to the sound of Rachmaninoff, and together they enjoy ``the melancholy of the truly damned.'' Soon after, Donal's father announces his own engagement to Rose, who is half his age. Rather than witness this betrayal, Donal decides to get his ``hatreds in perspective'' by running off to join the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. Awaiting execution in a Loyalist jail, Donal is released against his will with intervention from home and, on his return, discovers that his father has been crippled by a stroke during his entire absence. Donal settles down and takes up fishing for a living, but he's soon contacted by his former captor, who expects him to serve as a conduit to the now-outlawed IRA. Donal instead pursues a course of further betrayal, indifferent to the moral consequences of his acts. His relentless sense of damnation is relieved by a spectral visitation, and a reconciliation over what father and son enjoy together most: fishing with nightlines, an Irish version of playing catch together. Jordan's cinematic sense of plot is more evident here than in his last novel (The Dream of a Beast, 1989), which had none of this story's wit. A movie version is in order.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44438-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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
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