From the ever-appealing and underappreciated Kotker (Miss Rhode Island, 1978; Learning About God, 1988, etc.), a lightly rendered but unflinching tale of love—and its hazards—in the golden years of life. At 69, Billy Symmes is a widower, retired bandleader-clarinetist, and absentee landlord of a modestly profitable apartment house in Boston, his hometown. The ``absentee'' is because Billy has chosen to retire to Florida—where he's become involved with (engaged to, no less) the blond and still plenty good-looking Joyce Tarlow (67), herself from New York City. What could possibly stand in the way of wedded bliss for these no longer young but still active (and how) lovers? Kotker's alluringly spare short novel will give you the long—and much more complicated- -answer; for the short answer, though, enter Joyce's son Roy, graduate of no known charm school, connoisseur of the fast move (in real estate especially), and friend of the thuggish operator Dennis—who'll do anything to push Billy into turning his Boston apartment house into condos before the city's conversion law changes. What neither Roy nor Dennis counts on, though, is the real goodness in the tough—and toughly loving—Billy, who bravely (and with some real danger) holds the pair off, choosing decency over the easy million or so that would be sure to result in the eviction of old tenants and friends. In the meantime, what happens to romance? Does well-off Joyce still think the world of Billy after she feels almost ``like crying'' when son Roy tells her that Billy is `` `different from us, you know what I mean,' '' and then turns the knife by adding, `` `Your boyfriend doesn't know how to live the big-ticket life' ''? Whatever happens, readers will know more than they ever imagined they could or would about Joyce, Billy, passion—and what comes at the end of all things. Short, pitch-perfect, amusing—and wonderfully, briefly moving. Another small gem from the estimable Kotker.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-944072-68-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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