The sequel to Aksyonov's Generations of Winter (1994) surveys the fortunes of the Gradov family of Moscow following their ordeals during the Stalin years and WW II, then continues their story in the postwar period through Stalin's in 1953. Aksyonov's omniscient narrator, a saturnine and jaundiced observer of his country's ``progress,'' suavely juxtaposes his characters' fates (as in Generations) against the march of history as glimpsed in excerpts from news stories and snippets of quotation from famous and obscure persons alike (in ``Intermissions'' that resemble the ``Camera Eye'' and ``Newsreel'' sections of Dos Passos's USA). Most prominent are Boris Gradov IV, a military veteran like his late father Nikita, and a hopeful successor to his grandfather ``in the Gradov dynasty of Russian doctors''; young Boris's aunt Nina, celebrated poet and great beauty, and her equally fetching daughter Elena, who catches the eye of a highly placed Soviet official, to her sorrow and disgrace; Nina's surviving brother Kirill, reunited, after years in prison, with his Jewish wife Cecilia (and compromised by her enduringly flamboyant Marxism); and a host of vividly rendered others who are related to the Gradovs by blood, or choice, or sheer historical accident. Stalin himself is once again a pivotal character, though the triumphant real-life portrayal here is of former secret police chief Beria, now a powerful Minister whose deviant appetites consume him as well as his victims. Aksyonov's plot turns on opportunities afforded young Boris, a talented cyclist, as the 1952 Olympics approach, and also reaches both backward to the Gradovs' past (specifically, the experiences of their adopted son Mitya Sapunov) and forward to the climactic test that the elderly Dr. Gradov must undergo, and to the courage he discovers within himself ``in the lair of the KGB'' and in the larger, more forgiving world outside it, into which, by sheer force of will, he emerges. In every way equal to its distinguished predecessor, this is a triumphant conclusion (unless, as seems possible, another sequel is planned) to an indisputably major work.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43274-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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