Novelist Minot delivers a second collection of well-tuned fictions (after Crossings, 1975, not reviewed)—all perfectly balanced in their ability to evoke, enchant, and engage. As the title suggests, the 12 stories here focus on the powerful, often corrosive effect that time's passage can have on memories and our expectations. The volume is divided into three parts: ``Bending Time and Memory,'' in which the characters are inextricably bound to the past; ``Time in Exile,'' which reveals the disjointed lives of Americans living abroad; and ``Time in the American City.'' ``The Senator's Son'' (in Part III) subtly depicts the strained relationship between a prominent US senator and his estranged, antiestablishment son, the two now brought together for the funeral of the young man's mother. Their futile tug-of-war, with the senator trying to reclaim his golden boy of the past, with his beach bum son negating his father's dreams at every turn, ends with a pathetic arm-wrestling contest to determine control. Some of the most compelling pieces focus on Americans living in exile, literally and emotionally. ``Exiles'' portrays the bittersweet reunion of a son and his father on the latter's 70th birthday. All the players in the story are exiles of some sort: Robert's father has spent the last 35 years in Geneva as an academic; Robert lives in Paris with his wife, who herself feels disconnected from her rural hometown; and finally there's their friend Sigmund, German and black, who feels lost and without a homeland. ``A Death in Paris'' begins with the death of Victor, a longtime Paris resident famous for his generosity and charm, and follows the alarming discoveries about Victor and his double life made by two of his old American friends. What they find throws into question the validity of their memories and of the past itself. A fine example of the power and resonance of short fiction.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-877946-96-6
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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
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