Against a startling, brilliant background, a murky, unevenly realized foreground.
The bleak and beautiful Scottish Highlands mirror a strange triangle—in a frustrating debut.
Into the midst of Highland games in the village of Huil go poacher Mac Seraut and his dog Spot—and the Jack Russell paws loose his muzzle and leaps on a winning whippet, tearing out its throat. After that, protagonists Hugh MacIntyre and Aaron Harding carry forward Scottish author Nicoll’s rich, knowing, and meticulous rendering of the Highlands as a place of awful beauty where interloping tourists are fools and half-witted residents are religious zealots. The disengaged young men begin with malicious pranks—Hugh’s horse chomps down on a tourist’s cashmere sweater—and then move on to acts of bloodthirsty violence, culminating in scenes of rape and murder that surpass Patricia Highsmith at her darkest. The catalyst for much of the bloodshed is Rebecca Hume, who, at the games, flirts with Hugh. Sexually insecure, especially when he compares himself to Aaron, Hugh pursues Rebecca (she’s visiting the Highlands from London to forget a troubling romantic affair). As the two begin a passionate, sensual relationship, Aaron grows wilder: he even suggests to Hugh that they mine tourists’ walking paths with explosives. Eventually, Aaron and Rebecca duel, loading their pistols with tampons—one of several symbolic moments that lands with a thud—and Rebecca’s return to London restores tranquility between Hugh and Aaron, who now plan to travel the world together. The exact nature of their comfort with one another remains undefined, but even an armchair analyst will draw some ready conclusions when Aaron ties up, brutalizes, and rapes his girlfriend, insisting he was doing to her what Hugh said he did to Rebecca. Still, Nicoll leaves their relationship ambiguous, perhaps as a meditation on the treacherous border between friendship and love that the two men tread.
Against a startling, brilliant background, a murky, unevenly realized foreground.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932112-04-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Justin, Charles
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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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