by Richard Bach ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 1977
The Kahlil Gibran of the Me! generation called his last hero Jonathan, but now he's in full, self-y swing with a narrator named Richard who sells $3 rides on his biplane and learns to become "one messiah in a world of others." Richard starts all this learning in an Illinois cornfield the day that Donald Shimoda, the crowd-shy "Mechanic Messiah," lands his plane nearby and says: "There are somethings you do not know." And Donald's not kidding. Richard doesn't know how to fly a plane without gas, how to walk on water, how to work the off-on switch for celestial music, how to conjure up "thought-forms," or how to heal the crippled. Most of all, he doesn't know that everything's an illusion, and he's a slow learner. ("Oh, God, Richard. . . I thought you had reached this major knowing. . . .") But Richard does finally get it, thanks to Donald's show-and-tell and thanks to a magic book of illuminated verses, verses like "The/original sin is to/ limit the Is. Don't" or "You are led/ through your lifetime/ by the inner learning creature" or "A farewell is necessary before/ you can meet/ again." Bach's marketing instincts may be on-target again, mixing Rod McKuen and Christ with ESP and est, and providing, as a preface, Donald Shimoda's messiah life in a hand-written, biblically-phrased gospel. But Jonathan wasn't quite as, well, weird as Donald and Richard are, and the middle-road readers who cozily identified with a perfectionist seagull might decide to leave the walking on water to. . . a more specialized audience.
Pub Date: April 18, 1977
ISBN: 0385319258
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1977
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by Richard Bach
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by Richard Bach
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by Richard Bach
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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