Unstructured and undisciplined.
Prose poem by the author of Getting Our Breath Back (2002) depicts a haunted paradise.
Led out of slavery by Eliza, a woman of magical powers, a ragtag group of 12 travels by night for untold weeks and comes to a grassy clearing well hidden by the surrounding woods. Safe at last, they settle in the place they name Eden and flourish away from their former masters, happy to be forgotten by the outside world and living supposedly without sin in their secret idyll. But one dark day, white people show up, greedy for the fertile land and prepared to take it by law or by force. They set the houses of Eden on fire and then are hacked to bits in a night of blood and thunder, watched by Eliza’s daughter (also named Eliza). The dead are buried in a mass grave, but their unquiet spirits hold the people of Eden in thrall for decades to come. Time marches on, given solemn meaning by biblical quotations and the soul-stirring cadences of black speech. Progress encroaches upon the hidden town. Its sons and daughters leave for work in Cleveland, but the pull of home is strong. Several generations of folks live, love, and die into the present day with still more Elizas, as well as Hawk Eye, Red Cap, Aspasia, and little Lula just to vary the nomenclature. Jeremiah, a ladies’ man, contracts a fatal illness while livin’ large in New York City and comes home to die—tended, of course, by the last Eliza. Yes, Eden is a refuge and also, in some unspecified way, a prison for its descendants.
Unstructured and undisciplined.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-94810-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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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