Sandlin’s seventh novel (after Honey Don’t, not reviewed) has some lively flourishes, but the one-note humor quickly palls.
Ancient hippies, defying mortality, rise up against the administrators of their retirement community in this near-future black comedy.
Poor Guy Fontaine. Momentarily disoriented after his wife’s death, the spry 72-year-old drives his cart off a California golf course and onto an interstate. That one lapse allows his daughter Claudia to take control of his assets and bundle him into the Mission Pescadero, which provides, in the year 2022, both A.L. (Assisted Living) and N.C. (Nursing Care), meaning heavy sedation. Guy, a native Oklahoman and former sports editor, is an anomaly in this coastal California institution, most of whose residents are former hippies trapped in their memories of the Summer of Love (1967) or the 1969 confrontation at Berkeley; they still hunger for multiple sex partners (“monogamy is so . . . Eisenhower”). But Guy does find a kindred spirit in Roxanne, known as Rocky, who got a life as a waitress after the hippie scene faded. Sandlin gives these two a full measure of humanity (and his best writing), while treating the other residents as decrepit freaks (one has a face that “looks like a potato that’s been stored under the sink too long”). When administrator Alexandra Truman, a bitchy disciplinarian, confiscates one old geezer’s cat (house rule: no pets), Guy defends him, decking a staff member. The rebellion is underway, led by a canny crone with a walker who’s reliving her days as a ’60s militant. She outwits law enforcement (the hippie-hating Lieutenant Monk) tactically and strategically (“Our power is our age”), though she can’t prevent an anarchic resident spiking the community’s tea with acid. When Monk, armed to the teeth, goes berserk, the cat-owner heroically disables him, dying in the process. The female governor arrives and sides with the residents; as a tribute to their fallen comrade, they all drop their skirts or pants—the novel’s second mass-mooning.
Sandlin’s seventh novel (after Honey Don’t, not reviewed) has some lively flourishes, but the one-note humor quickly palls.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2007
ISBN: 1-59448-933-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
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
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