Not many story collections include an introduction by the author, but Howell clearly thinks readers need to be prepared for the wildly different subjects (and styles) on display in his first volume, some parts of which have appeared in various small magazines. Howell argues for an urban/rural dialectic here, but the city pieces seem less defined by place than by a shared voice: An angry male, done wrong by his women and venting his spleen in vile language. Three tales are also linked by the presence of Veronica, an unstable, obsessive woman who renews her sexual relation with the narrator in a Brooklyn restaurant bathroom (``In the Bathroom at Joey's Restaurant''). He eventually writes a letter (``Dear Veronica'') demanding the return of a favorite sweater, then takes his own obsessiveness a bit further when he breaks into her apartment and masturbates on her underwear and sheets (``Unction''). Howell plumbs bitter love in many guises: a stream- of-consciousness riff on a fickle woman that alternates between abusive language about her and civil telephone chatter with her (the title story); an anecdotal piece describing a date with a drunk (``A Date''); and another date story, this with a married woman the narrator hopes to bed (``Dinner''). Experimental bits include some formless verse on grief (``The Pink Clouds Are Blood''), and a bizarre little love story between a wildebeest and a jellyfish (``Willie and Jackie''). Two hilarious bits update the stories of La Bohäme and Oedipus, the first as a contemporary tale of a bulimic bohemian in Paris, the second set in a small modern Illinois town. Six stories, all similar in voice, are set in a rural South of outrageous, over-the-top shenanigans involving liquor, women, and low-comic antics, the best being the record of a hilarious drunken Passion Play in the longish ``My Education,'' a tale offering inspired goofiness on a par with T.R. Pearson. On balance: too many disagreeable and disposable pieces detract from some solid storytelling.
Pub Date: June 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14414-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
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