Splendid images and prose, but too much is left unsaid, leaving a splintered story at the core.
Dodd takes a sliver from the life of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) and creates an odd, claustrophobic fictionalized biography.
Wounded and shell-shocked after WWI, Oskar takes a teaching position at the Dresden Academy and residence with the local art museum’s director. The gentlemanly Herr Posse hopes that a calming routine and a steady diet of his young housekeeper Hulda's hearty cooking will restore Oskar to health and painting. It’s not war that has driven the artist to the brink of madness, it’s Alma Mahler’s marriage to Walter Gropius. Oskar was Alma’s lover before the war; in fact, he enlisted to impress her. Now abandoned by the notorious Viennese beauty, Oskar becomes fanatically attached to her memory and obsessed with the idea of a “silent woman.” He commissions a dollmaker to create a life-sized replica of his Alma—only quieter, kinder, and more pliant. Then he enlists Herr Posse's housekeeper, whom he’s casually renamed Reserl, to serve as lady's maid to his big doll. They pretend “Madame” is alive, serving her dinner, styling her hair, dressing her for bed. The heartache behind this absurd behavior is obvious to Reserl, the true silent woman, who is secretly in love with the tortured Oskar and willing to debase herself to win his favor. She falls under the full brunt of Madame's demanding requests and suffers with the knowledge that Oskar’s eyes always look a few inches past her, even when she is sharing his bed. The art teacher who tells his students that they must really see is himself blind to reality. Dodd has intriguing material here (there was in fact an Alma doll, first mentioned in a 1986 Kokoschka biography), and she creates a restrained portrait of obsession, Oskar's and Reserl’s. But restraint seems a poor tool with which to explore passion.
Splendid images and prose, but too much is left unsaid, leaving a splintered story at the core.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-17000-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
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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