This is a very impressive debut. One looks forward to Alexander’s second novel, due out next year.
A typical coming-of-age novel with a couple of murders thrown in.
Debut novelist Alexander introduces us to DJ Elders; his kid sister, Patty; and their feckless father, Dale (Piels beer’s best customer). The time is the mid-1960s, and the place is Hardscrabble, a little town on Long Island. DJ is a decent kid who just wants to figure out his future and lose his virginity. There are, of course, others in this little town, like DJ’s best friend, Ike O’Reilly, who has a very compromised heart; DJ’s uncles Wendell and the wise Monty; and DJ’s girlfriend, Leslie, caught between desires and defenses. Then there’s Greta, a cultured older woman who befriends DJ and Patty, who imagines that the poet Rupert Brooke was her lover. The engine of the plot, though, is Carlyn Canova, who is happy to take DJ’s virginity. She is a decade older than DJ, blonde, curvaceous, lusty and mysterious—every boy’s wet dream. She is also very likely a psychopath, literally a femme fatale. The cop who caught Carlyn and DJ in her Mustang and threatened them winds up dead a couple of weeks later. Then Bobby Litchfield, local big man on campus, with whom Carlyn had been cheating on DJ—and who also took advantage of Patty—winds up dead in the same fashion. Carlyn has disappeared. Was she the murderer? Alexander not only spins a very good story with a strong plot, but he knows his characters—knows, for example, that Greta can be flawed but still a good and wise person (same for Monty). There are nice period touches, like Queen for a Day and motor oil in cans and Piels beer. He is not averse to being lyrical, and he has a gift for it. And the wrap-up is sufficiently surprising but also quite believable. No cardboard cutouts here. These are real people, and Alexander makes us care about them.
This is a very impressive debut. One looks forward to Alexander’s second novel, due out next year.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991423743
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Greyfield Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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