From the prolific Disch (The Businessman, 1984, etc.), another severely weird boogie through a strange and specific world, this time the hermetic enclaves of some homosexual Catholic priests. To his credit, Disch resists heaping scorn on the troubled Father Patrick Bryce, an inveterate pedophile who can't stay away from hustlers and altar boys, even if the pursuit of his unholy pleasures has repeatedly landed him in hot water. Blackmailed by his own bishop and by a New Age zealot (and former trick), Father Bryce finds himself forced to preside over the Church-sanctioned establishment of a bunkerlike commune—where young girls considering abortions will be sequestered before they can terminate their pregnancies—while he's forced to receive a massive Satanic tattoo on his chest. Wracked by nightmares about partaking in a medieval Inquisition of French heretics, the wicked priest is nevertheless unprepared to ``transmentate'' into the figure of Bishop Silvanus de Roquefort, who swaps identities with Bryce and proceeds to rape and slaughter with the necrophilic brio that characterized his former Inquisitorial position. Silvanus finds his smorgasbord of debaucheries at the anti-abortion bunker, where the pregnant adolescents are guarded by a militantly dogmatic brother-and-sister team. As Bryce disappears into a newfound enthusiasm for auto-da-fÇ, sharing his transmentation experience with similarly dislocated UFO guru/author A.D. Boscage, Silvanus joins in a race to prevent the anti-abortion shrine's captives from being rescued by, among others, a friendly queer cleric whose murdered friend, Bing Anker, was one of Bryce's molestees. Bryce doesn't last long in the Inquisition: Accused of heresy by a tortured Boscage, the priest is crucified, but not before a plot to counterfeit the Shroud of Turin—using his body in place of Jesus'- -is revealed to him by yet another transmentated contemporary. A rapturously over-the-top yarn that takes a refreshingly bitchy stance. Not something the Pope will be reading before bedtime.
Pub Date: March 24, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41880-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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