Findley’s penchant for busy plotting is as evident here as in his earlier work (The Piano Man’s Daughter, 1996, etc.). This time, though, when a Tiresias-like character locks horns with analyst Carl Jung in the latter’s Zurich clinic, one expects the story to be rich with experiences past and present, conscious and unconscious. In a spring snowstorm in 1912, two weary travelers from London arrive at the famous BÅrgholzli Clinic—one, gaunt and mute, to be treated for suicidal intentions; the other, charming and lovely, to supervise. But Pilgrim, the suicidal one, has reason for his death wish: He can’t die, no matter how often he tries. His escort, Lady Quartermaine, knows this, yet she still wants to rescue him from despair. Shrewdly, Jung gets Pilgrim to talk again and also wheedles out of Lady Quartermaine one of Pilgrim’s journals, which reveals that the patient, a famous art historian, was acquainted more intimately with Leonardo da Vinci than seems possible. Jung can't accept the evidence that Pilgrim, in a previous form, was Leonardo’s lover and the model for the Mona Lisa, instead viewing this as an exceptional fantasy. When Her Ladyship dies in an avalanche, however, and leaves Pilgrim’s other journals to the bewildered doctor, he is soon out of his depth. The journals document Pilgrim’s lives as a 16th-century Spanish shepherd befriended by Saint Teresa; a stained-glass craftsman working on the windows of Chartres Cathedral; and a nobleman enjoying the action during the siege of Troy. Pilgrim’s adversarial attitude and Jung’s affair with someone at the clinic keep the psychiatrist from making progress with his patient. Eventually, Pilgrim turns violent and escapes, to fulfill what he sees as his final obligations. Some clever turns and echoes of Mann’s Magic Mountain, but in the end, Pilgrim’s many lives make him hard to know, and his nemesis Jung, for all his ambition, seems more inclined to chase skirts than such truth as might exist in the puzzle his patient embodies. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019197-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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
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
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