This hefty volume brings together three collections of newspaper columns by the pseudonymous Marchbanks. Written in the late 40's, during Davies' years as an editor and publisher, these musings, Perishes, obiter dicta, apophthegms, diary entries, and letters are only now available outside Davies' native Canada. To be more precise, these papers comprise The Diary, The Table Talk, and a Garland of Miscellanea by the aforementioned Marchbanks, but are "enlarged (to include a Biographical Introduction and Copious Notes calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passing of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of the Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form) by his long-suffering friend" and alter-ego Davies. To meet Marchbanks through these pages is to meet a curmudgeon of the highest order—a true misanthrope, an individualist of the most retrograde kind. Marchbanks, "a man whose temperament is philosophical and whose habits are sedentary," brings new meaning to the word "cantankerous." His enthusiasms, though few, help ease the dull routine of life's absurdities, and include cats, sherry, and Gypsy Rose Lee. More often, he confronts "an endless procession of vexing domestic problems," from his ongoing battle with an infernal furnace to his struggle against Nature in his pitiful garden. He rants and rafts against censors, the State, taxes, Hollywood, the masses, banks, machines, and the "disease of bad manners." In all things, he is by nature contrary." Everyman his own Boswell," Davies proves through his doppel-ganger, and he also provides fair warning: "only a coarse and warty soul could Find food for laughter here." While that invites his many fans, others will find this volume sometimes amusing, but mostly ephemeral.
Pub Date: July 1, 1986
ISBN: 0140097716
Page Count: 564
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1986
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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