WHAT WE DO IS SECRET

Name: WHAT WE DO IS SECRET
Author: Thorn Kief Hillsbery
ISBN: 0-8129-7309-7

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2005

May have some ethnographic value as a name-dropping record of early L.A. punk, but overly clever and utterly unpersuasive as...

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Sex, drugs and self-awareness amid the 1980s punk scene, in an idiosyncratic second novel from Hillsbery (War Boy, 2000).

Abandoned by junkie parents, Rockets trades the custodial embrace of the state for homelessness and hustling in Hollywood even before he hits puberty. He finally feels a sense of belonging in the L.A. punk scene that produced X, Flipper, The Circle Jerks and The Germs. Indeed, the story gets its title from a Germs single and its impetus from the 1980 suicide of the band’s front man, Darby Crash. It may be morning in Reagan’s America, but it’s always dark in underground L.A., and Rockets’ existence is a nightmare—enlightened only occasionally by fragments of sweet dreams—until he’s saved one golden California morning by lesbian folksinger Phranc. The author mostly refrains from easy pathos in depicting his almost-30 protagonist, but he fails to bring Rockets to life, in part because the boy’s history remains mostly obscured, and in part because the narrative voice is thoroughly unconvincing. Hillsbery’s prose ranges from cutely opaque to merely cute, and it never seems to match the language available or likely to be compelling to a punk-rock kid 20 years ago. Instead, Rockets talks like a biker or a beatnik or a Tin Pan Alley songsmith. His stream-of-consciousness is unintended kitsch—and immensely wearying. Hillsbery achieves his only moment of real beauty or truth in his opening pages when Rockets offers a list of everything he hates. In the midst of this childishly nihilistic—and, therefore, truly punk—catechism, Rockets exclaims that he detests poseurs, which is to say that he is disgusted when external presentation fails to match inner reality. That being the case, it’s difficult to imagine that he would have any use for What We Do Is Secret.

May have some ethnographic value as a name-dropping record of early L.A. punk, but overly clever and utterly unpersuasive as a novel.

Pub Date: April 19, 2005

ISBN: 0-8129-7309-7

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.