by Oscar Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1992
A relentless, grimly detailed debut from British journalist Moore, who chronicles the wild, free-wheeling existence of a lusty gay lad in London who lives fast and dies young, stopped in his prime by AIDS. Hugo Harvey gives vent to his rebellious nature even in childhood by vastly exaggerating his thoroughly middle-class family's fortunes to schoolmates. His pent-up passions have another release when he happens on heaven in a roadside loo frequented by gay men. Experienced in the ``toilet tango'' at the age of 14, he falls in love only to be jilted quickly, and as he grows older he moves ever deeper into the steamy, furtive world of quick sex and chemically altered states. Intelligent enough to attend Cambridge, he loses ground steadily to his primal urges, modeling for porn magazines and eventually taking up prostitution to support himself. Other facets of his incandescent existence include friendship with a woman he might have married, Cynthia, and frenetic backroom activity in N.Y.C., from which he comes home to die. Having watched close friends and lovers go before him, he keeps a fragile peace- -from his hospital bed—with his mother, whom he adored and feared in his adolescence and whose infidelity and deception paralleled his own. More episodic than chronological, with significant letters filling the gaps, many scenes are painted with a distinctly melodramatic flourish, but are no less impressive as a result. With its graphic, lurid sexuality, not for the squeamish—but devastatingly frank in probing gay experience and the vacuity of middle-class family life.
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93484-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
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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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