A heartfelt if frequently uneventful novel.
A college dropout with chronic anxiety finds meaning—and unlikely romance—working at an institution for developmentally challenged young adults.
Originally published in 1986, Borsten's first novel is the story of South Floridian Benny Horowitz, who quits college two weeks before graduation and finds employment at the ARC House, where he is charged with supervising eight difficult residents. Though he feels unsuited for the job, he is gradually drawn into their mysterious world. He is especially drawn to Nadia, an attractive 26-year-old who may have the mind of a 12-year-old and an IQ of 68 but sees the world through a rarified artist's sensibility that transforms the way Benny views life. His involvement with Nadia inevitably leads to his departure from the ARC House, but he maintains his deep connection with her in the face of adversity. Borsten, who works with developmentally disabled adults in Oregon, captures the world of these citizens with admirable insight and understanding, if not always the most compelling narratives. Long stretches of the book detail scenes without making them matter. And the sections on Benny's grandfather, a Polish immigrant who ran a successful dry-goods business while enjoying a happy arranged marriage, and Benny's father, Mort, whose life hasn't been the same since getting fired from his college job in a hospital for labor organizing, don't really connect with the main story. The high points of the book (the title plays on a term for death) are Benny's unusual sexual awakening with Nadia, which is handled sensitively but also sensually, and Nadia's streaming first-person monologues. To his credit, the author embraces the developmentally challenged as special without sentimentally depicting their lives as richer or purer than that of "normal" individuals.
A heartfelt if frequently uneventful novel.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57962-210-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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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