In his evangelical dotage, Tolstoy disowned not only his masterpieces but the complex world of art as wells the simple soul, the peasant, the pure of heart—these were those to whom he directed his later works. No doubt Thornton Wilder in presenting something so anachronistic, so pre-Freudian and late Victorian as The Eighth Day, a folk-saga purring with eternal verities and nostalgic Americana, had something of Tolstoy's odd nobility in mind. Of course, the sophisticated author of The Bridge of San Luis Rey is also the creator of such homespun fantasies as Our Town and the three short plays that make up The Long Christmas Dinner. But these theatrical pieces are highly stylized hymns to the common world, endowed with classic simplicity and a lyric glow never too far from the shadow of irony. Here, however, the long, rambling panorama of Coaltown, Illinois, during the 1910's, with its quaint dialectic of adversity, struggle, and triumph, its four-square characters and didactic asides, its picaresque arcs and graceful rhythms, its fancifully woven backward-and-forward plots, only hesitantly assumes the narrative splendor, the intimacy and vigor necessary to transform what is essentially a microcosmic allegory into flesh and bone. Starting with melodrama—John Ashley mysteriously escapes after being unjustly tried for the murder of Breckenridge Lansing—the romance dwells on the assorted adventures of both families, the sorrows and fortunes, the redemptions and long-delayed revelations (Lansing's son, it turns out, is a patricide). Poignancy is here, aphoristic charm, pleasant stretches of unabashed story-telling, and incidental riches. Unfortunately, the Christian humanism, the provincial earnestness on which everything rests seems both too decent and distant for our age.
Pub Date: March 29, 1967
ISBN: 0060088915
Page Count: 1
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1967
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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