Second-novelist Binstock follows the elegant Trees of Heaven (1995) with a disheveled exploration of weighty matters: familial attachment and loss, and the complex architecture of a writer's inner world. Phillip, a talented but lonely 46-year-old novelist, has agreed to allow his 23-year-old cousin Jennie—on the rebound from an abusive relationship—to come stay in his quiet New Hampshire home. The kind of writer who stores his manuscript-in-progress in a safe deposit box, Phillip has analyzed the fragile magic that results in finished pages, and he's sent past lovers away out of deference to his work. So he watches himself in dismay as he takes increasing pleasure in his attractive cousin's company and her admiration. As the sexual tension builds, other characters' stories intervene: There's Jane, a local apple-grower who loved Phillip and still mourns the end of their relationship. There's the ghost of Bertha, the previous owner of Phillip's house, who hovers about, spying. And there's Sutherland, a character in Phillip's novel, a soldier of pained sensibilities, suffering as his tattered company fights the Civil War. After much mutual circling, Jennie proposes sex and the cousins find bliss in each other's beds. But troubles loom: Phillip's moodiness emerges, Jane contacts Jennie, and Jennie's violent ex arrives still in the throes of obsession. While these matters develop, there's much to admire here: Binstock's prose is spare and graceful, and he skillfully weaves multiple perspectives into something resembling a cohesive whole. Phillip is complex and always interesting as he self-consciously attempts to keep hold of a vocation that defies conscious control and a present shaped by past losses. Jennie, however, is a flat and platitude- spouting character; the result is that the central love story lacks ballast. Still, between Binstock's stylistic virtuosity and the ample psychological insights lodged in Phillip's story—and in those of many of the marginal characters—there are substantial rewards in this ambitious if flawed novel.
Pub Date: May 16, 1996
ISBN: 1-56947-059-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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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