An unconvincing melodrama of the Age of Aquarius.
In this coming-of-age novel, a young man enters the Vietnam-era counterculture on a search for himself—and finds more than he bargained for.
During the 1967 Summer of Love, 18-year-old Bob Ralston decides that San Francisco is the place to be, even though he’s already getting his share of free love, pot, acid and the occasional Timothy Leary lecture in his Milwaukee hometown. There are more of those things in California, however, along with Doors concerts, anti-establishment posturing and stoned ruminations on the cosmos (“I wondered if we were all inter-related and our individualism was nothing more than a hindrance to universal order”). After arriving in the city’s Haight-Ashbury epicenter, Bob moves in with roommates, including a woman who’s simultaneously a sociology professor, a card-carrying Communist notorious for her fiery anti-war speeches and a femme fatale who models a bikini for Bob before sexually ravaging him. The scene gets heavier when Bob inadvertently gets mixed up in a string of bombings and encounters the Hells Angels, the FBI and the “Weathermen Underground.” The author regales readers with hippie spectacle and probes the conflicted, turbulent 1960s; Bob wrangles with his growing political opposition to the Vietnam War, his fear of the draft and guilt over avoiding it, and his unease at the New Left’s excesses. However, Rice’s portrait of the times also includes improbable elements such as anarchist hit squads and a parade of women constantly importuning Bob for sex—and even barging in on him in the shower. One compelling subplot follows Bob’s high school buddy Hoss as he ships out to Vietnam and confronts the horrors of war when he gets lost in Viet Cong-controlled territory. Unfortunately, Hoss’ story takes a back seat to Bob’s relatively callow sex romps, muzzy soul-searching and cartoonish intrigues.
An unconvincing melodrama of the Age of Aquarius.Pub Date: July 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615767581
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Fox Point Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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