Watkins has outdone himself: this gifted young writer (In the Blue Light of African Dreams, etc.) has written his best yet—a successful fusion of a young man's quest for his origins with a harrowing account of the Troubles in Ireland (prior to independence in 1922). Ben Sheridan is the appealing hero and narrator. It's 1921; the Irish-American university graduate has landed his first job, with a Rhode Island bank, and his future seems assured. His mother died young, but Ben is close to his father Arthur, fire chief on Jamestown island. Then, an accident; Arthur needs blood, but the direct transfusion from Ben kills him. The doctor concludes that Arthur could not have been his natural father, and Ben, flabbergasted, is without a road map. Only by seeking out the truth in Ireland (his father seldom spoke of the old country) can Ben impose order on chaos. He takes a cargo ship to Galway. The cargo is guns, as Ben discovers when he is hustled ashore. The innocent Yankee (Watkins scrubs the stereotype clean as a whistle) finds himself in the middle of a war between the IRA and the notorious Black and Tans (British soldiers), a ``local feud'' with informers everywhere and atrocities on both sides. The British know about the guns and about a mysterious American they figure is Arthur Sheridan (another shock for Ben: his father was a former gun-runner who promised to return); so events push the reluctant Ben into the IRA camp. He does eventually learn the truth of his paternity, but he also learns the truth of his own irreducible essence as he kills two men, refuses to kill two others, and calculates the odds of his survival. Whether it's a peaceful domestic scene or hand-to-hand combat so real it hurts, Watkins's sure touch never falters. The joy comes from watching him find the right image, again and again and again. From start to finish, this is fine work.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41974-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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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