Brotherly love never hurt so good.
The messy realities of life and death intrude on a family’s deeply held rationalizations.
Hawley (Other People’s Weddings, 2004, etc.) creates an unsettling, caustically funny portrait of contradictory siblings at odds with themselves, their lovers and their wildly dysfunctional relatives—imagine the family showdown from a Sam Shepard play infused with the more sophisticated existential crises of Tom Perrotta’s novels. The animated preamble opens on Valentine’s Day to find David and Scott Henry waiting in the harsh light of an emergency room, one with a broken nose, the other with a broken fist. “Now that you know what happens,” Hawley writes with a wink, “it’s time to start this story where all good stories should start. In the middle.” Scott doesn’t believe in the basic decency of human beings, least of all himself with his pathetic job (eavesdropping on customer service calls) and his cheating harpy of a girlfriend. Brother David is the proverbial family man, but he’s got a secret. The traveling salesman has and holds dear not one but two families, both with children, one on each coast just to be safe. His anxiety and fears about being discovered are at war with his desire to be free of all his burdensome responsibilities. “You think it’s the hardest thing in the world, to change your life, but really it’s as easy as falling downhill,” Hawley informs us. “All you have to do is let go.” The untimely death of their father inspires an ill-advised road trip with their bitter, alcoholic mother. Subsequent misadventures ultimately lead to one man’s expression of grief in a strip club, another’s unlikely encounter with a higher power and, finally, that world-shattering punch. Hawley’s interruptive ruminations on the nature of time, storytelling and universal truth occasionally threaten to derail his narrative, but the fractured appeal of these rival siblings runs as deep as their angst.
Brotherly love never hurt so good.Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8118-6429-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
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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