Taylor (The Lost Sister, 1989, etc.) tells the 1950's saga of a philandering Oklahoma father and the coming-of-age of his son—in nine interconnected stories that deal mostly with male sexuality and offer an incident-filled evocation of two archetypal lives. Bill Haynes is the father, Billy his son. Bill is a salesman (in his prime he sells high-school class rings, then, in his decline, textbooks) and, by his own account, an artist whose talent was ``compromised...before it could properly be developed.'' In ``The Girl I Left Behind Me'' and ``Dark Eyes,'' told from Bill's point of view, Taylor dramatizes a bleak life in dust-bowl Oklahoma: ``I have worked all my life. I have lost everything, a wife to another man, a job through no fault of my own, my son and daughters gone off to their own lives, and I've scratched my way back more than once.'' In the next six stories, told from son Billy's perspective, the family takes a vacation (``Sentimental Journey'') that is at first idyllic, then obsessive and argumentative; the parents separate; the father remarries twice and takes to hard drink (``Lady of Spain'') while Billy motor-scooters about town and, like his father, practices the accordion; ``The Tennessee Waltz'' not only introduces the clan (Texas, Tennessee) but also begins the sexual initiation of Billy that is consummated in the novella-length ``Golden Slippers,'' in which Billy, a shoe salesman (``the shoe is emblem and anthem of human folly''), meets Vernagene. In the final piece, ``Sweet Hour of Prayer,'' Billy attempts (in part through meditation) to come to terms with his father's collapse. The title story appeared in both the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories in 1987. Like that piece, the collection—managing by turns to be both gritty and lyrical—is a memorable one.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-945575-79-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
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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