There's an old John Prine song, ``Spanish Pipe Dream,'' in which the singer meets a stripper who advises him to blow up his TV, move to the country, eat a lot of peaches, and try to find Jesus on his own. Waller (Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, 1993, etc.) kick-starts his latest with a similar encounter between a stripper and a drifter: Texas Jack Carmine rushes to the rescue of a stripper when some ``nameless piece a' shit tore off Linda Lobo's G-string instead of putting money in it like he was supposed to.'' What follows has a little more sadness, a little more violence, and a lot less irony than the Prine song. Texas Jack is tailor-made not just to suit feminine fancy but to fill the empty pages that men reserve for the images of their alternate selves. ``He'd thought once or twice about joining up with the armies of conformity, then reconsidered and went on being a seldom hombre, dancing to some other song nobody else heard or even dreamed about hearing, living his days in a fashion that made Henry David Thoreau look like a regular citizen. Henry David spent only two years staring into the waters of Walden Pond, Jack Carmine had spent a lifetime doing something like that and never once saw anything resembling a reflection looking back at him.'' Jack's had some tough times. In fact, he was the gunner in the whirly-bird that lifted the last Americans off the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. Jack is GI Joe, Willie Nelson, a lover, a dancer, a crooner. The ballad of Jack and Linda proceeds to where any good American romance must: the road, and backwards into a troubled past. With references to country music and original Waller (not Fats) tunes written by the character of Bobby McGregor, the book yodels its themes of music and rootlessness. What it is, in fact, is a no-holds-barred romance for men. (First printing of 1,000,000; first serial to Playboy; Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-446-51858-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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