A first collection of fairy tales and fables from Britain's Poet Laureate (Winter Pollen, 1995, etc.), who seems somewhat less than steady on his feet when it comes to prose. Like most poets, Hughes has a keen ear for the music of language, and a strong, almost visual sense of image, and he makes good use of these talents in his stories, all of which seem, in the final analysis, to become evocations of mood rather than narratives. Thus, in ``O'Kelly's Angel,'' we are witnesses to the political furor that erupts across Europe when a caged angel is put on display in Yorkshire, and in ``The Deadfall,'' we are told of a boy's quest to find the ghosts who appear to his mother. The perspective throughout is often that of a child: ``Sunday,'' for example, shows how a dead rat provides a boy with his first inklings of mortality, just as ``Rain Horse'' describes a somewhat older boy's conquest of such fear as it's expressed in connection with a farmhorse escaped from its paddock. While Hughes manages to convey moods and the textures of feeling with great skill, he invests these moods with very little history and almost no storyline for the reader to grasp or remember. Those familiar with the sad history of Hughes's marriage to Sylvia Plath, for example, will be able to decode the symbolism of ``The Head,'' but most may be baffled by its opacity. Similarly, the war narrative at the heart of ``The Wound'' is made somewhat more interesting through an awareness of its genesis in the actual experience of the author, but not enough so to make up for its obscurity of purpose and general lack of action. Good news for fans of Hughes (and Plath) only; less resonant for others.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14587-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
SEEN & HEARD
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