King (One on One, 1992, etc.) makes yet another trip to the Maine setting of four previous novels to wring a last drop of small-town life from a Nodd's Ridge long ago milked dry. This time, the focus is on Reuben Styles, whom King fans will recognize as Sam's father in One on One and Pearl's husband in Pearl. Here, as the hulking, hard-working son of an abusive farm owner, he's teetering on the brink of adulthood at the start of the Vietnam War. But he becomes a man before his time when his father, who's secretly dying of cancer, commits suicide, and he has to quit basketball at Greenspark Academy and take on more hours at the local garage to support his mother. Although work interferes with drinking beers with his friends at the quarry and chasing after his beautiful classmate Laura, it also enables him to buy the garage when he graduates from high school and to reap the benefits of the attentions of a voluptuous, alcoholic widow who spends summers on the lake with her two precocious children and her oft-neglected Cadillac. The affair ends when her eldest catches the two of them in flagrante delicto. Then her youngest gets shot, and everyone knows that it was no accident, despite the official ruling. Reuben now has hope for a normal life. He and Laura get together, marry, and manage to have three kids despite Laura's distaste for sex. Then Reuben turns to alcohol, telling himself he can handle her rejection since he's so in love. But when Laura turns to God and the arms of the fire-and-brimstone spouting preacher, leaves him in the name of Christ, empties his bank accounts, and steals his children, Reuben must face facts and fight back. Pulp fiction parading as an in-depth look at rural life. Exhaustingly hip with endless music quotes, an interracial relationship, bisexuality, and sex scandals.
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93766-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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