by Solveig Torvik ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Cheerless but memorable; an update of Knut Hamsun and Ole Rölvaag with more whispers than cries.
A brooding, often beautiful tale of life in the Far North and the immigrant experience.
A former journalist, the author knows how to work a source and analyze the data, but family stories are another matter, particularly in a family of abundant secrets. Her kin were bound together, she writes, “by an unacknowledged credo: if a thing remains unspoken, it does not exist; if pain is given no voice, it lacks power to harm.” Both principles are at work in Torvik’s first novel—billed as fiction, it seems, only because certain liberties have been taken when the facts have not been available. The hinge of the story is great-grandpa Nikolai, who, much to the chagrin of these status-conscious Norwegians, hails from Finland. “Being a Finn was shameful, I knew, though it wasn’t clear why,” the author comments, and Nikolai lives up to this perception by leaving his wife and unborn daughter behind to go off to America to make a fortune that became the stuff of legend. Not everyone back home shares his certainty that great riches are to be found along the salmon-heavy Columbia River, but they’re all interested, especially because so many live in grinding poverty. Suspicious of each other as much as of outsiders, the close-lipped clan keeps its secrets. “Most people don’t ask,” says Berit, whose story forms the middle section of the three-part narrative. “They don’t want to hear the truth. They can’t bear to hear it.” The taciturnity serves the family well under the Nazi occupation of Norway, but nagging uncertainty over Nikolai’s disappearing act, and whether he indeed became rich, provides the occasion for a parallel journey, as Torvik’s parents emigrate to the United States, leaving it to her to sort out how to become an American teenager and to reckon with the unsettling discoveries she makes in a new land.
Cheerless but memorable; an update of Knut Hamsun and Ole Rölvaag with more whispers than cries.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-295-98563-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of Washington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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