Writing very smartly indeed but no better or worse than in his largely well-received Hot Properties, The Murderer Next Door, etc., Yglesias achieves by sheer dint of an inspired story what may be his breakthrough novel (already optioned for a Peter Weir film starring Jeff Bridges and Isabella Rossellini). This time out, he tells of a magical change of character in the survivor of a runway air-crash. First-rate but unfulfilled architect Max Stein becomes really alive, fearless of all constraints, and sets out to trim all the deadwood out of his life and stand dripping with dew in the early lilacs. This lightning bolt of alienation from society or estrangement from mankind is a state of mind much enjoyed by Tolstoy's heroes, and with that plot and a man back from the dead, Yglesias can do anything and it will be as fresh as a visiting Martian's first hot dog with mustard. Unhappily married fellow survivor Carla Fransisca blames herself for losing her infant in the crash and becomes housebound and fearful of the streets. Enter superhonest, worry-free Max to bring her back to life, telling her, ```We're safe because we died already....You've passed through death. You're alive now. Both of us are. All of the survivors are. Don't you see? Everybody else'— he gestured at the streets, at the people hurrying to their destination, hunched against the cold, scurrying with the fear of hunted mice—`they don't know what it is to die in their minds as we did.''' Meanwhile, Max and Carla are hounded by their mutual lawyer, Brillstein, who hopes to wring a huge settlement from the airline—though neither Max nor Carla will make it easy for him with lies about the crash. Also, Max's wife Debbie, long-suffering through the ordeal of her husband's manic honesty, weighs having him committed and saved from overrich fearlessness. Smells like a wonderful story that should enjoy huge word of mouth.
Pub Date: April 8, 1993
ISBN: 0-446-51723-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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