Second-novelist Davis (1959, 1992) adds a little intrigue to this dull tale of art, love, and death among some black bohemians in New York. Cynthia Kincaid, known to her friends as ``Bird,'' is a sound engineer for Public Radio, having abandoned painting after a scathing review of her first show. Her artistic impulses now seem to be sublimated into her sex life, or, at least, into the art of enticing a wide array of handsome and sexy men into her bed. Her true obsession, though, is the recent death of her best friend, Alex Decatur, an artist ``known for her atavistic clay works.'' Bird is convinced that Alex's fall from her apartment window was no suicide, but somehow related to Alex's violent relation with Frank Burton, a white art critic who also happens to be responsible for the devastating review of Bird's work. Bird and Alex rented adjoining apartments in one of New York's noisier neighborhoods, ``the Quarter,'' blaring with ``the sound of dark bodies in a cramped Babel of passions and spirits.'' When Bird discovers Alex's secret address book, and her library of video diaries, she hopes to find the tell-tale clues to her death. Instead, she realizes that Alex was deliberately trying to torture Burton with outrageous tales of other lovers, which Bird recognizes as based on her own encounters. Burton, meanwhile, fears what might be on the tapes, and eventually sneaks into the apartment only to encounter Bird's elaborate surprise, an art installation that confronts him with the truth. Relying on martial arts and a strange mix of voodoo craziness, Bird gets Burton right where she wants him, and also rediscovers her own talent as an artist along the way. Davis works in lots of asides on black filmmakers, sexual politics among blacks, and religious mumbo-jumbo—all of which diminish interest in the mystery that supposedly drives the plot, but that feels more like an afterthought in this meandering work.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-81225-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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