by Nora Pierce ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2007
A promising debut.
You can go home again, a young Native American girl discovers, even when there’s no home to go to.
In this slender debut novel, set among the Quechan people of the southwestern desert, Pierce evokes a world that hardly seems worth wanting, but that exerts its pull nevertheless. Young Alice, five when we meet her, has come back to Quechan country with her mother, an alcoholic wanderer who will soon melt down in mental illness but is aware enough to bring her to the man she calls Alice’s father. He has his demons, too; as one of her chores, Mami “folds brown paper bags from Papi’s Wild Turkey whiskey bottles,” a job that yields a small mountain of sacks. Though her troubled parents are role models of a kind certain to earn a visit from Child Protective Services, Alice learns much from them; particularly valuable are constant lessons in Quechan belief, told through folktales that might make a social worker blanch. Clearly, Alice cannot remain—not after Mami suffers a breakdown—but it seems a terrible injustice that she should find herself in a suburban foster home in which “there is no noise, not even at night.” The years roll by until Alice, now 13, must go on an odyssey of her own, one that puts her in danger but in the end affirms who she is and where she belongs. The tale is a little too thin and certainly too brief, but it is well-rendered, and Pierce allows a few smiles in the proceedings that are reminiscent of Sherman Alexie, as when the announcer at a delay-plagued powwow laments the workings of Indian time: “ ‘Almost?’ he says. ‘Not quite? Okay.’ He looks out at everyone in the bleachers and says resignedly, ‘You know this is why we lost the Indian wars.’ ”
A promising debut.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7432-9207-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
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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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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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