The never-humdrum Katz is up to his old tricks in the last of a threesome (Wier and Pouce, 1984; Florry of Washington Heights, 1987) about life and death in a Manhattan neighborhood. Too bad the surrealism overpowers any palpable story. William Swanson, otherwise known as ``Swanny,'' is a former New York Bullets gang member from Washington Heights who's taking the night-course route to a law degree. Meantime, he's shacking up in tenements with an array of unsuitable women, taking calls from his Jewish mother from her retirement home in Florida, and heading south for his Irish father's funeral. Or is he? It's impossible to tell whether anything Swanny says is true, whether anything he does is really happening. Jackson Ryan, the other narrator, is equally unreliable. This former leader of the Fanwoods, a rival gang, receives and comments on a series of ``manuscripts'' (which compose the book) that Swanny apparently leaves for him outside his office or apartment. Much of the reflection in these writings centers on Swanny's memories of Florry O'Neill, the bright and beautiful girl from the earlier books in this series who was raped and murdered at 15 and with whom both Swanny and Jack were in love. Although Swanny is obsessed with a man he calls Kutzer, his former junior-high gym teacher who, he says, killed Florry, as the manuscripts progress it becomes unclear whether Kutzer is actually evil or whether he even exists. Other elements and themes appear dramatically and then disappear without a trace: Sledge, the black man who was imprisoned unjustly for Florry's murder; interracial cohabitation; Swanny's half-sister Madeline, with whom he has a brief sexual encounter; Jack's wife Clovis's lesbian affair—all are unceremoniously, tantalizingly dropped. Experimental Fiction with a capital F: If Katz (who writes well, plots less successfully) is out to baffle readers utterly, he has succeeded with flair.
Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1996
ISBN: 1-55713-209-7
Page Count: 554
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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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