Pashman debuts with this precise and troubling portrait of a smug and cultured man who doesn't recognize his own despair. Nathan Kline is an ophthalmologist on the way up: He has the right credentials, a Park Avenue practice, and a carefully cultivated appreciation of music, food, and painting. When he spots Carla, a fresh-faced college student, in an elevator, he pegs her as a thoroughbred and wants her for his wife. He writes her a letter introducing himself; her parents, impressed by his rÇsumÇ and his vocabulary, urge her to accept a date. And though Carla never feels more than mild affection for him, she bows to popular opinion and marries him. In short order, Nathan comes to find his wife inscrutable, her quirks unpleasant, her neuroses worthy of contempt. Still, there are consolations: He rakes in grant money to conduct research that a loyal assistant designs; he has a chain of extramarital affairs; his practice flourishes; his form on the ski slope is admirably crisp. Years go by. He has two daughters and is surprised and pleased by their affection; he goes to concerts; he disappoints his marriage-minded lovers by not leaving his wife. Nathan's realizes, though, that his body is aging; the prospect of open-heart surgery makes him briefly aware of the extent to which he never understood his patient's fears. In despair, he calls Vera, the ex-lover of a friend: She's intelligent, self-possessed, and alive, and he begins to fantasize about a new beginning. But ultimately the familiar inertia prevails, and he remains tied to Carla. Nathan is a memorable character, restless in his ambitions but remarkably unable to reflect on what he lacks or to value what he has. A vivid cautionary tale, then, about the seductions and emptiness of a life in which conquest stands in for love.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-877946-86-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
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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