A playfully surreal but enthralling story of society’s castoffs.
In Poe’s (The Long Forgetting, 2016, etc.) dramatic novel, a drifter and a wayward teenager find common ground at a boardinghouse for people with disabilities.
Truman Birdsong has been moving from job to job, tarred by an ex-wife’s false accusation of child molestation. After the Weeks brothers, who own a local plant, renege on a promise of employment, Truman gets an offer from Parfit, an enigmatic older man, who says that Mercer, the owner of a boardinghouse for the disabled, is in need of a hired hand. The few who reside at the boardinghouse include Julius Rose, whose curved spine gives him a perpetual hunch, and Aiden Burns, who’s been blind since the age of 10. Parfit also brings in 13-year-old Nicolai Tate, whose mentally ill mother is in the hospital and whose father is in jail. Both Truman and Julius are wary of having the boy at the boardinghouse, particularly as he’s clearly avoiding a probation officer. But the real threat comes from the locals, who treat the boarders as pariahs and may have formed their own militia group. It turns out that the Weeks brothers have a cache of weapons to arm such a group—and may also have eyes on the boardinghouse’s land. Parfit makes a cryptic prediction, implying that Nicolai is in danger. Although Poe touches on serious, real-world subjects, such as violent “antigovernment types,” the story also has an otherworldly overtone. Parfit, for instance, seems to have unexplained abilities—at one point suddenly appearing just when Truman and Nicolai need help. Aiden’s odd, verbose speech is an endearing quirk: “You need a moment to think…a moment and no more, no, not a bit,” he tells Julius. There’s a clearly developed theme of fatherhood throughout; Truman, like Nicolai, has an estranged dad, and it’s hard not to see Truman becoming a paternal figure to the teen. The romance between Truman and Kennis McDuff, Nicolai’s probation officer, is also welcome, although that relationship pales in comparison to the bond between the boardinghouse denizens.
A playfully surreal but enthralling story of society’s castoffs.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9905845-2-0
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Rippo Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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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