This final work by National Book Award winner (for Becoming a Man, 1992) Monette, novelist/poet/memoirist who died of AIDS in 1995, is cast in the form of a fable. Monette does well as a stylist in this farewell effort (``minimally edited for clarity and resonance''), but less well as a storyteller. A witch of changeable gender casts a spell over a forest to protect the freedom of the First Ones, those animal descendants of the forest's first settlers. The witch dies, leaving her spell intact but the responsibility for its preservation in the uncertain hands of goofy Albertus, an apprentice wizard. Just what the spell is, or how it works, isn't made clear; its main function seems to be to repel interlopers—such as hunters—and to keep the forest as it has always been. On the other hand, the larger animals still chase the smaller; the law of the wild remains intact. When the witch dies, a Great Horned Owl, sensing an opportunity, displaces Albertus and takes it upon himself to rule in the witch's place, ostensibly on behalf of the First Ones. Owl announces to his subjects that many refugees, exiles, and criminals from felled forests have entered through a tear in the forest's fabric of magic, and he calls for harsh measures. Then, midway through the fable, Owl's Orwellian tactics cast a shadow over Renarda the Fox and Lapine the Rabbit, both females, who have fallen in love and decided to live together in the same den. They are circumspect, not wishing to upset the other animals by their same-sex, different- species affair. But Owl hears of their affair and, calling down the law on them, exiles Renarda and Lapine to different parts of the forest. Enter Albertus to save the day by resurrecting the dead witch. As political fable, neatly enough spelled out but less than memorable.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-83286-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 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
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