MAKING THE SKELETON DANCE

Name: MAKING THE SKELETON DANCE
Author: Patricia Garfinkel
ISBN: 0-8076-1464-5

by Patricia Garfinkel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2000

While the work is not without some thematic clunkiness (each section is laden with epigraphs), the very nature of the story...

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Seldom does a volume of poetry conclude with an annotated list of the names that dot its pages, but so ends Garfinkel’s third collection, and with cause: these characters are real, their names notorious. A science policy analyst and speech writer for high government officials, Garfinkel is the daughter of Hyman Wendroff and the niece of Dixie Davis, both attorneys to legendary mobster Dutch Schultz. The relationship of the poet’s family to one of the loosest cannons of the 1930s New York underworld lends these poems a brutal yet fascinating intensity. Descriptions of Schultz blinding a foe by wrapping his eyes with gauze “soaked in a brew of gonorrhea pus / and rat droppings,” and murdering another by carving the beating heart from his chest and then passing round “a glass of warm blood / to quench the thirst to tell,” are as gripping as they are spare. But beneath these extraordinary atrocities lies something more intimate, devastating, and ultimately common—the poet’s relationship with her mother. A good third of the volume is comprised of “dialogues,” short transcriptions of conversations wherein the adult daughter interrogates her mother, trying to fill in the blanks of a childhood lived with an assumed name, under house arrest, and, eventually, in a physically abusive environment. The mother’s struggle to evade the past is matched only by her daughter’s desire to construct it, and the resulting tension evokes powerful questions of identity formation and the ethics of storytelling.

While the work is not without some thematic clunkiness (each section is laden with epigraphs), the very nature of the story Garfinkel dares to tell reminds us that poetry is an ideal medium for breaching the unspeakable.

Pub Date: April 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-8076-1464-5

Page Count: 96

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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.