This odyssey of a societal dropout doubles as a feebly satirical overview of downtown Manhattan's performance art scene; Black, an Englishman, also wrote Me and Kev (not reviewed). Frank hates himself. He has, he tells us breezily, always hated himself. He yearned to be an artist, but he didn't have a shred of talent. He moved to New York and worked for the city, but he even bombed as a bureaucrat. At age 29 he quit his job, lost his home and possessions, and frequented shelters and soup kitchens. Frank's one consolation is the parade of beautiful women on the streets of the Lower East Side. He starts following a pretty young woman called Henry (Henrietta). Luckily for Frank, Henry collects freaks. A member of a wealthy old family, she is living with a strung-out musician. Suddenly and improbably energized, Frank, the guy who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, stages a show to win his newfound love; but when he sets his hair on fire, it just makes Henry feel sick, though the performance gives him cachet (``Frank the Self-Destructionist'') and an unwanted admirer in Luz, a tall, exotic woman who practices black magic, deals drugs, and ``spreads the disease.'' She tells Frank he has a cause (``the death of art'') and persuades him to be crucified in order to redeem it. His pursuit of Henry now takes a back seat to the preparations for his crucifixion as Frank becomes a tour guide to Luz's ``avant-garde wonderland,'' gets his penis pierced (``part of the modern primitive movement''), survives more ordeals (another burning, a fall from a fire escape), and sounds more and more like a comic-strip character (`` `Arrgggh,' I growled''). Black is just mouthing off here. His superficial sniping at the artistic pretensions of the downtown druggies never amounts to a coherent vision.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-880909-25-1
Page Count: 185
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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