An achingly drawn despair, the kind that leads to high body counts and unhappy endings.
A tale of surpassing anomie set in a grim, late-night electronic-game arcade.
Kurt Black is 20 years old and at loose ends, pulling the night shift at a foul, coin-operated gaming parlor aptly named Warzone Amusements in Perth, Australia. It is the kind of sticky-linoleum, mangy-carpet place that should only exist in bad dreams. Early on, Black appears to be a wounded soul with a bit of poet lurking under his hard-bitten exterior: “Solvent-intoxicated memories crept from every corner and the B.O. of fear could be traced leaching from the walls and ceiling.” The clientele is mostly down-and-out Aborigines, glue sniffers and gang bangers who detest the white Black, a feeling that is reciprocated. Newcomer Dowing has Black rub very close to bigotry, but never tip into it. Rather, he sours to the human race and “the sewer they called modern life; a shit-city extravaganza of violence and perversions and hopelessness and depravity and cold cola and greasy chips between the struggle, the thieving and the cheating for money.” Black has never been shy when it comes to confrontations, but Dowing works him slowly but steadily into a lather of hormone-fueled rage, progressing from bare fists to spiked brass-knuckles to a sawed-off shotgun. The author introduces characters who may pull Black back from total spiritual annihilation, but they are fleeting–the ghost of a dead man, some ill-starred girlfriends, a Bible-thumper–and give Black only pause to reflect on his downward spiral, a junkyard dog in a place that’s little more than a feral zoo. The writing is of such a visceral quality that it is tempting to think Dowing has been down this road, a road littered with car wrecks it is impossible to peel one’s eyes from. Hopefully not. If Black is shatterproof, he’s also mean, too mean to ever meet his definition of a hero–the common man who soldiers on despite the odds. For Black, the world’s dark and fit for mayhem.
An achingly drawn despair, the kind that leads to high body counts and unhappy endings.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84799-383-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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