On balance, promising as worthy kin of Mary Renault and Steven Pressfield.
Suetonius says that at age 25, sailing to Rhodes to study rhetoric, Caesar was taken by pirates and held for 40 days, “to his intense annoyance.” First-timer Panella gives fictional voice to the episode in a book that deserves its place on the shelves of the historically minded.
Politics underlies everything, and, declares Caesar, “I can trace my presence on this island directly to our civil war.” He means not the famous tumult that he himself is later to begin, but the war between populists and aristocrats that’s draining Rome’s strength, thus giving free rein to anti-Roman pirates in their work of prey at sea. When Caesar is taken, his unscrupulous captives think only they’ve gotten a rich young man, but soon the greater truth is known, and pirate-chief Cutter can exclaim, “We have here a Julian!” Cutter’s own hatred for all things Roman is boundless (his missing right hand plays a part in the bitter and dramatic story he’ll later tell), but it’s possible that while he waits for the gold to arrive that will release his prisoner, he comes gradually to respect him, even if he is Roman. As for Caesar’s part, he will ponder his prospects, ambitions, health, piety—and sexuality, as he dreams (explicitly indeed) of making love again not so much to his wife Cornelia as his widowed and passionate lover Servilia. Will Caesar, after his ransom, return to slay his prior captors? Will the bond that seems to have grown between him and Cutter prove illusory, real, or a little of each? Panella stumbles from time to time—into movie dialogue, for example (“But that means you! Don’t you understand, we’re tied together. If I fall, then you fall!”), but, overall, the psychology he gives his figures rings true, as do the details he summons of this long-ago world, including those of its cruelty.
On balance, promising as worthy kin of Mary Renault and Steven Pressfield.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-89733-484-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
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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