Glass Mountain is an arduous climb. Still, it’s always good to know what Koster is up to, even if he’s never come close to...
A high-concept premise unfortunately obscures both characterization and theme in the latest from Koster, an American writer based in Panama who’s best known for his Latin American–based, science-fictional Tinieblas Trilogy (The Prince, The Dissertation, and Mandragon).
The narrator and protagonist is Carlos Fuertes, an adventurer-mercenary (and son of the assassinated former president of a fictional banana republic) who has survived “three tours of operating in North Vietnam” as a rescuer of downed pilots held prisoner behind enemy lines. As the story begins, Carlos (a.k.a. “Carl Marenga”) is well established in his present career: “stealing children” for estranged or divorced parents who’ve lost both custody of their offspring and patience with legal recourse. Koster grabs the reader’s attention early on (despite throwing out names of numerous secondary characters without immediately identifying them), characterizing Carlos as a thoughtful amoralist who’s nevertheless bedeviled by both erotic and menacing dreams, as well as hallucinations that evoke his action-filled past and seem to forecast his catastrophic future. Detailed accounts of his exploits as rescuer and assassin, and of his training as part of the “elite unit” (code-named “Golden Retriever”) specializing in rescue missions, are often quite interesting in themselves, but don’t really seem to lead anywhere. Focus is attained when, on a mission to kidnap an American embezzler who has found sanctuary in the fictional country of Atacalpa, Carlos reencounters a woman whose children he had abducted (acting for her ex-husband), realizes he loves her, and undertakes his own “mission” (dubbed “Glass Mountain,” after a fairy tale he’s loved since childhood) in an effort to reverse his criminal course and realize the best of those aforementioned dreams. A most curious novel, whose impressive density of detail clogs its workings and leaves its protagonist too hazily sketched to solicit much reader empathy.
Glass Mountain is an arduous climb. Still, it’s always good to know what Koster is up to, even if he’s never come close to matching the achievement of his Tinieblas novels.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-02007-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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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