by Phil LaMarche ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 17, 2007
Flawed, but a solid start for a new novelist.
An accidental shooting transforms a New England town and the lives of three boys.
Change comes fast for 14-year-old Teddy LeClare when his .22 rifle discharges in his parents’ living room. A new friend who lives in one of the fancy developments in town urged Teddy to load the gun, something he’s always known not to do. Before the cops arrive, his mother makes him swear that he will lie about what happened to anyone who asks: the police, nosy kids, even his father. Teddy finds himself a pariah among his freshman class of 600 students, for although he’s too young to have his name listed as a suspect in the local paper, their New Hampshire town is small enough that word travels fast. Teddy doesn’t care. This limbo he’s living in until the fingerprint and gunshot residue tests come back (a friendly patrolman tells him it’s not like on TV—the results could take a couple months) suits him just fine. The only thing he can feel is the super-heated top of his Bic lighter pressed tight against his skin. Unknown to Teddy, though, he has become a local hero to a self-styled America First group of teenagers, who rage against gun control and other “Federalist” restrictions. He doesn’t know what to make of them or their anti-drugs, anti-sex-before-marriage, anti-land-development credos that also seem to include opportunistic shoplifting and acts of vandalism against the rich and mighty. When they turn their pent-up aggression on the other boy under suspicion for the shooting, Teddy finds the complications of his young life suddenly compounded. Debut novelist LaMarche writes compellingly about small-town mores, and the pacing is brisk as Teddy’s life spins out of control. But the author refers to Teddy throughout as “the boy,” a narrative conceit that keeps not only the character Teddy, but also the reader, at a distance.
Flawed, but a solid start for a new novelist.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6605-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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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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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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