by Peter Gadol ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2000
Strongly written in language gray as a Paris rainfall, with moral ambiguities heavy as mist.
A lyrically detailed gay suspense novel, with romance and suspense sharing interest equally.
Will Law has quit the American foreign service after, tragically, going too far out on a limb in his Mexican posting. Seven years after their breakup, he writes his ex-lover Pedro in Paris that he’d like to see him again. Pedro, the narrator, is an art historian focusing on French architecture. He and Will spend their first three days together in bed, then go out into a bread riot backed by the ultra-rightist French Front, which wants the immigrant laws reversed—and more white Gallic babies for voting purposes. Will’s father was a top FS officer, and one of Dad’s friends has gone to great trouble to get Will reinstated in the service, with a new posting in Jakarta, but he’d be a spy. Gadol’s (The Long Rain, 1997, etc.) backgrounding in FS adds much to Will’s weight on the page. Before Will can back out of the new assignment, he meets an American, Jorie Cole, and Nico, the four-year-old son of her Lebanese lover, now in Nigeria. The skinheads from the French Front have been doing dastardly things to dark-skinned immigrants, and, as Jorie stands talking with Will, some chain-wielding skinhead terrorists swoop down on Nico and kidnap him. All kids who have earlier been kidnapped, as the French police know, eventually have been returned unharmed. As an American, Jorie is especially disillusioned about raising Nico in France, where, despite being born there, he’s not a citizen, is subjected to racial slurs daily, and has almost no rights. Will helps her through the police questioning and tries to save Nico. One good act helping Jorie recover Nico, Will thinks, will turn his life around after his Mexican fiasco. Success will, however, have its fatal demands.
Strongly written in language gray as a Paris rainfall, with moral ambiguities heavy as mist.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-20336-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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