A literary Australian's affliction with HIV and his decision to spend some of his remaining time in Europe are merely the pretexts for this surprisingly engrossing collection of epistolary reflections on the meaning of life, love, and time—a bestseller in Australia that deserves to find an appreciative audience here. ``Midway along the journey of our life/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,'' this book begins, quoting from Dante's Inferno (a work to which the author frequently refers throughout the text). The words aptly describe the situation in which Dessaix's anonymous protagonist finds himself, having learned that he carries the HIV virus and can quite likely look forward to a slow, agonizing death. Loathe to disrupt his quiet life (he's a writer in Melbourne) by committing himself to fight the disease, unwilling to putter along pretending it doesn't exist, he decides to drift wherever chance takes him for a while in an effort to learn to experience his remaining moments as fully as he can. In these letters home, written in a Venice hotel room over the course of 20 days, our hero details his often mundane traveling adventures through Locarno, Vicenza, and Padua; details his intriguing conversations with a mysterious German professor staying at the hotel; meditates on the innate meaning and emotional significance of the cathedrals, museums, and venerable alleyways he frequents; and makes use of numerous entertaining discourses on the history of Venice, the nature of Venetians, the differences in philosophy and style between Marco Polo and Casanova, etc., as springboards for pondering the fate which awaits him—and all of us as well. Seductive, charming, and always thought-provoking. Despite this hero's unhappy prospects, he and his creator (a literary journalist and author of an Australian-published autobiography, A Mother's Disgrace) prove the best of traveling companions, whatever your journey happens to be.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-16950-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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