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HOLY RADISHES

Fern†ndez (Raining Backwards, not reviewed) continues his exploration of Cuban-American experience with a nearly unintelligible supposed satire of immigrant life. The setting is Belle Glade in the Florida Everglades, where the former aristocrats of Xawa now live in exile and toil at the local radish-processing plant. Their stories are told at breakneck speed, zipping back and forth in time, through long-winded and unrealistic streaks of dialogue. At the whirling hub of these scattered tales is Nellie Pardo, who, as a child, was a spoiled rotten near-savante who spoke only to her pet pig, Rigoletto. Grown up, she marries Nelson Guiristain, the unwilling heir of a business empire. Nelson attempts to ease his anxiety by spending long hours chasing the squirrel at Marina's luxury zoological brothel. When revolutionaries overthrow the Cuban government, Nelson escapes with his father's company's several million dollars in cash in a cardboard suitcase, but sets himself free of paternal pressures by throwing the money into the sea. The exiled have various ways of surviving once they find themselves in Belle Glade. Nellie and her vastly overwritten redneck neighbor glue seashells and glitter on stray animals and open an exotic zoo. Nelson's best friend, Bernabe, in the belief that a local Jewish merchant is hording a vast treasure, tattoos a number on his arm and poses as a long-lost relative. (This is not the only distasteful ethnic reference; Nellie works at the radish plant with a black woman who says things like ``Dats what ah always say, de lawd will provide.'') Meanwhile, Nellie and Nelson's marriage splinters further as he yearns only for his lost squirrel and she retreats into her fantasy world. In the end, perhaps, they will both realize their dreams. A silly and sloppily composed compendium of ethnic stereotypes scantily clad as satire. And as every struggling comic knows, when slapstick falls, it falls hard.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-55885-075-9

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Arte Público

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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