In this, her debut collection, Redel (a Gordon Lish protÇgÇ) gives us 16 stories (some previously published in, among other places, The Quarterly and The Antioch Review) that, taken together, comprise a wild smorgasbord of subject, voice, and skill. It is difficult to find a unifying style or theme here, as Redel's influences seem to run the gamut from magical realism to Mamet. Thus, many of the tales (``Where the Road Bottoms Out,'' ``Wool,'' ``My Little Pledge of Us,'' etc.) are impressionistic exercises that seem to turn upon childhood reminiscences recalled from a great distance of years: Basically plotless and rhetorically baroque, they tend to revolve around one theme—usually, the exile or ancestry of a Russian family in America—that is not so much developed as continually and elaborately reiterated. These are not narratives in any real sense, then, and they fail as evocations as well—insofar as they do not create an atmosphere coherent enough to sustain the ambiguity of plot. As a contrast, ``Avenge! Avenge!'' is told in the macho voices of several Wall Street sharks, working-class low-lives who sit around a table after work and compete to provide the most pungent story of life on the Exchange. And ``Service, Servic, Servi''—the most successfully realized piece in the collection—provides a tale of class and generational conflict enclosed within the outline of a jewel heist. Altogether, a very mixed bag. Redel combines a sharp eye with a ready tongue—but fails, for the most part, to let the reader see what she's describing. Underripe.
Pub Date: May 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42071-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
BOOK REVIEW
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