A slowly deflating bubble of sophisticated storytelling.
A moody literary love story set in Barcelona morphs into a mystery centered on reincarnation and the Cathars, with postmodern layers.
Welsh poet Gwyn’s debut novel works best in its evocative, enigmatic opening chapters, in which Welsh-Spanish loner Lucas strolls the city streets, drifts among bars and galleries and mingles with his bohemian friends and some more peculiar folk, like the tarot-reading fire-eater, the roof people and a writer in a green suit. An unsigned postcard slipped under his door lures him to the Miró Foundation, where he encounters a beautiful television researcher, Nuria, with whom he begins a passionate relationship. But after a couple of weeks of romantic bliss, the story abruptly changes gears; the couple are drugged, bound, abducted and transported in coffins to a mountain lair where an obsessive named Pontneuf tries to convince them they are missing, reincarnated members of a group of 17 Cathars who disappeared in 1247. Nuria seems more persuaded by this idea than Lucas, whose initial interest fades into animosity. Pontneuf imprisons him, then tries him for crimes committed in the 13th century and plans to burn him at the stake, but Nuria arranges an escape. Back in Barcelona, Lucas succumbs to drink, drugs and pneumonia, while pining for Nuria and narrating his story, in the third person, to his skeptical friends. The fire-eater and the roof people reappear, as does the man in the green suit, actually a baron who reveals that Pontneuf is Nuria’s father. Although another postcard reunites the couple and Lucas begins a novel based on his experience, such formal tidiness does not dispel the creeping sense of an idea unraveling.
A slowly deflating bubble of sophisticated storytelling.Pub Date: March 20, 2007
ISBN: 0-385-51855-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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