by Steve Schmale ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2014
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In this novel set in mid-1990s, small-town coastal California, an aimless young man drinks, does drugs, watches TV and hangs out with his buddies.
Lenny Decker has settled into a low-expectations kind of life. Accomplishments include thoroughly cleaning his bong, watching an entire season of Dallas “every Monday through Friday morning for six weeks,” and lately, eating and showering “regularly, if not frequently.” Lenny once showed promise as a pro golfer, but something happened on a trip to play in Japan; ever since, he’s led a man-child existence, staying rent-free in a cabin won in a card game by his grandfather, burning his savings, and playing pickup basketball for “personal pride and local recognition.” But Lenny isn’t necessarily enjoying it. As he tells a drinking buddy: “I mean nothing feels better than hitting a twenty-footer nothing but net, or scooping up a hard one-hopper right in the palm of your glove, or smacking a line drive so hard the infielders freeze….But all those moments of joy they are just…they’re just fleeting moments of ecstasy.” His regrets are mounting, too: “But now a fuck-up, a fuck-up is a different story….A fuck-up could probably stay with you just about forever.” Through the course of this novel, Lenny goes to a few parties, drinks a lot, rolls many doobies, and courts a beautiful, long-legged young woman, all of which brings him to a decision about continuing down the path of slackerdom. Schmale (Nobody Bats a Thousand, 2012) skillfully portrays the atmosphere of a sleepy beach town with its barflies, surfers and tourists. He also convincingly delineates the rationalizations, excuses and habits of wake and bakers: “As he blew out a thick cloud of [marijuana] smoke…Decker felt sure he wasn’t really lying to himself, he was merely delaying his rendezvous with the truth.” Not much happens, sure, but Decker’s interior state is appealingly rendered.
A thoughtful, laid-back novel about getting into and out of a rut.
Pub Date: April 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495347481
Page Count: 336
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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