Burdened with a clunky title, and far too close in tone to early Salinger, Brown's appealing debut nevertheless captures the traumatic process of growing up gay in an oppressively straight world. Human society has yet to devise a straighter institution than the American high school, which is where a glib but confused Ben Smith finds himself at the story's outset—as a freshman toting a hot-pink notebook in which he summarizes his daily trials, triumphs, and observations. Ben's homosexuality is not an issue that Brown leaves open for debate: The kid's as gay and proud as any closeted 14-year-old can be. But Ben has larger immediate problems than his emerging sexuality: From his besotted father to his weeping mother to his ultra-religious grandmother, not to mention a dim-wit brother, Ben's family life looks like a white- trash version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not to mention that the miserable clan lives behind a gas station. After a brief spell of mooning over his history teacher, Ben falls in with Aaron Silver, the bright new thing in Chappaqua, Maine. A child of liberal Jewish parents, Aaron sports an earring and almost immediately exhausts his welcome with school administrators when he begins publishing, aided by Ben, an incendiary underground newspaper. Endlessly annoying to the powers-that-be in their corseted environment, Ben and Aaron fall swiftly in love and start fooling around, an activity that Brown depicts with a refreshing if at times YA restraint. The issue here is that neither boy outs the other—they were both comfortably gay before they met. They do manage, however, to introduce themselves to the possibility of love and devotion (and adolescent obsessions)—a series of life lessons that troubles plenty of waters and, predictably, wrecks innocence forever. Not as good as Edmund White, but still an insightful first effort distinguished by punchy language and a solid emotional core.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-89084-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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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