Make it new, said Pound, and Dobyns always does: this account of four extraordinary weeks in the life of a large Chilean family, sheltering from a series of earthquakes, is his best novel yet. The Big One rocked southern Chile on May 22, 1960, to be followed by months of smaller quakes and tremors, mudslides and tsunamis. Four thousand people were killed; the moon turned blood-red; many believed the end of the world was at hand. The solidly bourgeois Droppelman family of Puerto Varas experiences convulsions of its own, culminating in scandal. The story is told by eight-year-old Lucy, whose father, a cattle merchant, is killed by a falling chimney brick; she and her two brothers take refuge in their grandparents' farmhouse. Lucy's grandmother is overjoyed by the quake, since she has all her brood under one roof; very much the controlling matriarch, she envisions them all dying and entering Heaven together. Ironically, the opposite will happen: they will survive, but fragmentedbecause the earthquake frees the adults from conventional restraints. Great-aunt Clotilde dresses up for Death in her sister's wedding gown; gluttonous Uncle Walterio steals his nephew's candy; Aunt Miriam is permanently tipsy. Uncles Hellmuth and Alcibiades, formerly best friends, fall out when Alcibiades becomes infatuated with Hellmuth's wife, a self-absorbed coquette; there is a bloody fistfight, and Alcibiades leaves town. Lucy herself, devastated by her rather's death, almost dies from a fever; her perspective is enriched by flash-forwards in which, 30 years later, the mature Lucy ponders the nature of memory and experience. Our often hapless attempts to control our lives are a common thread in Dobyns's work. But while Cold Dog Soup (1985) and The Two Deaths of Se§ora Puccini (1988) rested on outlandish premises, here Dobyns hits pay dirt with a credible situation that fits his preoccupations like a glove. In addition, little Lucy's beautifully modulated voice brings the hitherto missing ingredients of compassion and tenderness to this eccentric mÇnage.
Pub Date: June 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-670-83914-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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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