by Steve Stern David Plante ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2010
An ethnic novel with universal implications.
Yes, this is indeed a novel about a frozen rabbi who thaws in the late 20th century after being found by Bernie Karp, of Memphis, Tenn., in his parents’ freezer.
Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness, 2005, etc.) uses his absurdist fantasy to explore issues of faith, secularism and redemption. Bernie, in particular, is in need of the latter, for he’s a 15-year-old couch potato with no interest in or regard for his religious heritage. While the novel starts with the recovery of Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr from the deep freeze (Bernie’s father explains to his bewildered son that “they handed [the rabbi] down from generation to generation”), Stern alternates chapters chronologically, beginning in 1889 when the rabbi, a noted holy man in Tsarist Russia, would meditate by a pond in order to get closer to God. One day a storm came, the water rose, the rabbi continued to meditate and winter eventually arrived, resulting in his being encased in ice. From that point we trace both the history of the Karp family’s interaction with the frozen rabbi (in the early 20th century it helped that an earlier Karp had owned a large ice factory) and Bernie’s spiritual transformation as a result of his interactions with the Chasidic sage. Bernie begins to lose weight, to have out-of-body experiences and to become intellectually invested in obscure Jewish mystical texts. Meanwhile, the rabbi becomes fascinated with and impressed by life around the year 2000: “Shopping bazaars it’s got, and Dodge Barracudos and Gootchie bags made I think from the skin of Leviathan…but it ain’t got a soul.” The rabbi makes a radical attempt to ingest soul into this culture by establishing a “House of Enlightenment” in a strip mall in Memphis. As Bernie’s fortunes begin to rise—he even acquires a “trailer trashy” girlfriend sympathetic to his needs—so do the rabbi’s decline, resulting in a tragicomic conclusion.
An ethnic novel with universal implications.Pub Date: May 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-56512-619-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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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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