Though stretching credibility at times, Arvin makes a worthy and felt addition to retrospective WWII fiction.
A vividly told first novel about a WWII soldier who never quite understands what’s going on.
When the good but vacuous George Tilson arrives at Omaha Beach (the landings are over), he’s nicknamed “Heck” because that’s his strongest swear word. Heck is from Iowa, 18, and naive, and at once he begins somehow to fall between the cracks, waiting for an assignment that never comes, while others around him are sent off to the front. In scenes only half-believable, he wanders from camp, helps a little French kid who’s injured by a mine, ends up being seduced by the kid’s pretty sister Claire—and, spastically embarrassed, runs away before consummation. Finally attached to a unit and under a night artillery barrage—rivetingly described—Heck discovers that he’s a coward, huddles in his foxhole against orders, and gets separated from his unit. When he then gashes his leg in a fall before finding the others, he’s sent rearward—where, as the seriously wounded suffer and die, he once again somehow goes all but unnoticed. Wandering into town one day, he comes upon Claire’s father—who accuses him of having gotten Claire pregnant. Once again, Heck flees. He’s sent to a unit on harrowing wintertime forest duty, sees death, finds himself once again under heavy fire—and holds his arm up until a bullet pierces it, sending him rearward again. But a ranking fellow soldier sees what he does, and later, after more turns of events, takes the opportunity to punish Heck in an unusual, apropos, and fiercely trying way—one that will hold the reader breathless. Arvin (stories: In the Electric Eden, 2003) opens and closes with references to a real-life Private Eddie D. Slovik, shot for desertion in 1944. Heck’s poor story, subtly enveloped inside Slovik’s, becomes only the more lamentable and sad.
Though stretching credibility at times, Arvin makes a worthy and felt addition to retrospective WWII fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51277-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
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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