No stranger to excess, pulp-pounder King returns to Nodd's Ridge, the small-town Maine setting of Pearl (1988) and Caretakers (1983), for a heavily hip and hormonal coming-of-age saga in which two high-school basketball stars forge an alliance on and off the court, a liaison that brings both glory and tragedy. Sam Styles is the mild-mannered, scrupulously honest Wunderkind of Greenspark High's championship team, and is also the son of Reuben, whose relationship with Pearl was the focus of King's previous novel. ``Samgod'' becomes the chief protector of the ``Mutant,'' Deanie Gauthier, whose intensity on the court matches his own, but whose bizarre appearance and lack of scruples off the court have made her an outcast. Drawn to her until he's giving her rides and food, and helping her team to improve by arranging preschool practices with his, Sam is also drawn into deanie's private hell, learning about her sex-for-drugs arrangement with the local dealer, and about the physical abuse (also sexual) that she suffers at home. A rocky secret romance begins, fueled by lust and loud, loud music, and they convert Deanie's abandoned-mill hideaway into a private practice-court/love-nest, where Sam finds her when her mother's boyfriend smashes her face in a jealous rage. The Mutant returns to the hoops wearing a plastic face mask, fiercer and more fearsome than ever, and she and Sam easily steer their teams to state titles, but their future is suddenly darkened when Deanie's mother is beaten to death by the abuser, who then turns his rage on them. Relentlessly au courant in music and lingo, numbingly detailed in depicting the smells and surges of adolescence, this has a few fancy moves but in general fails to follow through for the score.
Pub Date: March 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93590-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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