Beautiful, heartbreaking, and deceptive; this fine novel taps into real mystery.
In this deeply affecting short novel, a nursing home’s paperboy becomes intertwined with a dying old man and his memories of a lost love.
As narrator John Fulton explains to the reader, he was 17 when he delivered newspapers and magazines to residents of the Spring Lake Home and discovered that an old man there, Bob Brown, left him an album and journal filled with unmailed letters. John presents these to the reader interspersed with his own comments, memories, and investigations. Bob’s letters are addressed to someone named Margo (whom John later cannot track down), admitting to her, “It’s hard for me to concentrate on one thing at a time….I’m every age I’ve ever been.” The sentences often seesaw between past and present, between memory and dream or nightmare, but always come back to rest on a set of images and phrases: a dark-eyed girl, her white blouse, the mint tea her mother made, a high meadow in spring with a trail to snowfields. John becomes Bob’s helper and, in more ways than one, his heir. Blanchard (The High Traverse, 2000) works alchemy in these pages, achieving an almost unbearable tenderness. Bob’s memories of the girl—so few!—are infinitely dear. His dreams are full of sorrow and anxiety. But much more is going on here than grappling with loss. The paperboy (at first so straightforward) seems spiritually linked to Bob, almost his living reincarnation, adopting the old man’s dreams. We are, it seems, in the realm of the numinous; the paperboy can be seen as a divine messenger, Bob’s psychopomp, as well as his heir. Yet Blanchard provides “evidence” that the account is real, with photos and news clippings. Paradoxically, the more Blanchard insists on authenticating his story, the more he underlines its fictiveness, but why? Maybe because Hermes is also a trickster. Blanchard’s work is the kind of literary fiction that rewards rereading and will keep readers thinking and feeling long after closing its covers.
Beautiful, heartbreaking, and deceptive; this fine novel taps into real mystery.Pub Date: May 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1604891126
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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