First appearance in English of this finely wrought novel by Norwegian writer Hlmebakk (1922-81) exploring the fundamental tensions between life and death that perhaps only love and hope can palliate. Two middle-aged men—retired Lutheran pastor Eilif Grtteland and Olav Klungland, a novelist and active communist—meet by accident outside a hospital. Olav has just visited a dying comrade, and Eilif is admitting his terminally ill wife, but these obvious reminders of death are mere introductions to the spiritual concerns that preoccupy both men. Both are at the ``carriage stone'' in their lives—a stone symbolizing the moment of choice between dying or living. Olav is depressed about his work, finds politics meaningless, and the comment by his dying comrade that it is not ``good form'' to speak about death makes him think obsessively about the subject. In subsequent meetings, Olav learns that Eilif has experienced a similar crisis: The pastor has lost hope and his faith in God. While his wife is in hospital, Eilif tells Olav his life story. He grew up in a village where his father was driven mad by failure, and where elder brother Lars was so consumed with hatred for all those who tormented his family that he often brutally assaulted Eilif. During the German occupation Lars became a Nazi informer, for which he was sentenced to death. The horror evoked by the confession Lars made to Eilif on the eve of his execution sowed spiritual doubts that would be increased by a daughter's death and his wife's illness. But, serendipitously, both men ultimately experience quiet and unexpected epiphanies that make life once more endurable. A serious book that grapples with the issues it raises in eloquent and simple prose that never cloys or tries to minimize the urgency of its concerns.
Pub Date: April 5, 1995
ISBN: 0-8023-1305-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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
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