A skillfully rendered, if occasionally overwrought, portrayal of resolve during and after war.
This fictional family saga leading up to and through World War II is a finely detailed story of grit and survival, a story more universal than unique.
To call Revak’s debut a novel is a little misleading. While he uses novelistic techniques, this is really the true story of the Revak family, stretching back to the early years of the last century. We begin in early 1920s Scheindorf, a village in Hungary/Romania (boundaries are always shifting), with Gertrude Revak and her only child, Stefan. Stefan Sr. is in America, trying to earn enough money to bring them over. Stefan is a good son, old beyond his years, and he and his mother are hanging on grimly. Defeated by immigration laws, Stefan Sr. returns to Scheindorf. They are a family again and begin to prosper. Stefan marries Maria Ditzig, and they have two daughters. Everything is good, but as always, it does not last. Comes the war, and Stefan is drafted into the German army. Stefan, no Nazi, is appalled by every aspect of the war. And eventually the Revaks will have to flee Scheindorf, becoming displaced persons. The war ends, and Stefan frantically searches for his family. After a hair-raising effort, he becomes a POW, lost in the bureaucracy. (His eventual release involves an amazing coincidence that Revak assures us is true.) By the 1950s—Revak himself was born shortly after the war—the Revaks have reached the promised land of the USA. The book is well-written. Sometimes plot points—obstacles to be faced, tearful anxieties and then reunions, gut-wrenching disappointments—seem to be hammered home a little too hard. There is a balance here of cruelties and kindnesses that make these bromides real—human nature writ large. One lesson is that the aftermath of a war is almost as bad as the war itself. Includes a timeline, character list, and bibliography.
A skillfully rendered, if occasionally overwrought, portrayal of resolve during and after war.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942545-70-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Legacy
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 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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