Next book

MODERN PHYSICS

AND OTHER TALES

A first collection of 20 stories tries to make black humor out of macabre jokes, surreal grotesqueries, and the underbelly of life. While a few succeed, transforming seaminess into blue-collar blues, most fall flat—wet dreams and nightmares not yet shaped sufficiently. The title story, written in three parts, is typical. In the first part, Bill (``no marriage, no job'') loiters through his life until he finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time— holding a spent shotgun after happening upon a convenience-store murder—and gets blown away by the cops; in the second section, written in uncapitalized modified stream-of-consciousness, a drunk Vietnam vet beats up his daughter, causing his wife to leave him, whereupon the vet retreats to his basement and takes potshots at cops until, surrounded, he kills himself; the last part is written in black dialect, another take on the underside of life. Too often such material is delivered in an unexceptional style and the dialogue fails to ring true, but Christian has a flair for overlaying his modern bombed-out world with an effective futuristic patina: ``The place [convenience store] was manned by people who spoke in a barely intelligible modern dialect...The prototype of a new language. A language to be used when humans lived in metal spheres buried beneath the blasted surface of the world.'' Some of the pieces, in fact, have a Rod Serling-like twist: in ``The Mobile,'' a sculptor noted for such masterworks as ``Roadkill'' (``a mobile constructed of the animal carcasses he had collected'') arranges for a customer (and ex-lover) to pick up his latest piece: himself, hanging dead from a rope in his studio. That sort of thing has a certain punch to it, but as a collection, this one—despite some fine gritty detail and several sharp portraits of the down-and-out or the merely mean—too soon punches itself out.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-922820-16-3

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991

Categories:
Next book

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

Categories:
Next book

MAGIC HOUR

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

Categories:
Close Quickview