by Nicholas Delbanco ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2000
One of Delbanco’s most attractive and accessible books.
Delbanco’s elegiac and elegant 13th novel (Old Scores, 1997) gathers the voices of a family of German emigrant Jews to describe their “escapes” (to London, then America) from Hitler’s persecution, and their mourning for the high culture betrayed and destroyed by the Nazi regime.
The family’s stories are framed by scenes set in 1996, during primary narrator (Americanized) Benjamin’s return, in middle age, to England for a visit with his dapper Uncle Gustave, an art dealer and enthusiast sustained on into old age by his love of beautiful things (years earlier, describing a purchase, Gustave had observed that “In a world . . . so full of willed barbarity, it is important that a picture with a shepherd be acquired and a claim be lodged for lastingness”). Other voices, speaking during the years 1944–64, include those of the young Benjamin and his older brother Jacob, growing up during the Blitz and amid muttered references to “Schicklgruber . . . the devil incarnate.” Delbanco creates telling indirect characterizations of their father Karl, a would-be artist who settled for becoming the dutiful son (unlike his brother Gustave) and went into business, eventually prospering (as owner of a “bristle factory”); and their neurasthenic mother Julia, embittered by the loss of the scholarly career she had sought in Germany, and by the (gratuitous and utterly false) suspicion that her husband is anything but a model of fidelity and decency. The best character here, however, is haughty “Granny” Elsa, kept alive by the wisdom of her beloved Boethius’s Consolations [sic] of Philosophy and memories of her late husband, taken by cancer before the Nazis could take him. These portraits and reminiscences are episodic, and to some degree static, but What Remains is often very moving, especially for its precise discriminations between going beyond what was lost and embracing “what remains” (in a resonant phrase ingeniously adapted from Ezra Pound).
One of Delbanco’s most attractive and accessible books.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2000
ISBN: 0-446-52416-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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