Recondite fiction by a London antiquarian and bibliophile who seems to have figured Pynchon's voice without grasping his depth. Thomas Graves, the antiquarian narrator, is not nearly as epicene as his prose: fresh from a stint in the army, he spends most of his time backstage with rock groups or in pursuit of underage girls. During the day he deciphers ancient texts of alchemy for ALEMBIC, a secret committee established by the British Crown for murky and probably nefarious purposes. One might say that Graves approaches his task with an unhealthy dose of cynicism, since (as a result of his army hitch) he has little faith in either the beneficence of Her Majesty's Government or the decency of the British Establishment. He is simply happy to find himself employed for good wages at an amusing job, and doesn't really piece together the bizarre ramifications of his project until close to the end- -which is quite strange in light of his tendency to ruminate at great length on practically every other subject that crosses his mind. Meanwhile, d`Arch Smith buries every incident or perception under so great a sea of verbiage that the novel ultimately seems little more than a loosely connected string of digressions. One typical sentence describes the audience of a rock concert: ``As a gloomy accompaniment to the music, muffled echoes, screams, one assumed, of pleasure or terror, issued at intervals from the gang's inky black recesses, upon the surface of which occasionally broke a head or a stockinged foot betraying as feminine the otherwise unidentifiable mass of partially clad flesh that seethed in more or less regular undulations as though, at a cannibals' feast, the girls, undissected, were being cooked up alive.'' Even the esoterica—the only thing that might have carried the reader along—gets washed away in this tide.
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1992
ISBN: 1-56478-009-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
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
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