by Vincent Romeo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2014
A son's journey to his late father's hometown in Italy turns up surprising revelations in this first novel.
In an emotionally charged work of fiction, the actor and memoirist Romeo (Behind the Store, 2011) tells the story of Tony Romeo, an aging actor on daytime soaps, who returns his father’s ashes to his ancestral home in Calabria. In seaside Lirò Marina, Tony encounters old friends of his father’s as well as a large extended family that speaks as much English as Tony does Italian (not much). Despite his ongoing frustration with the language barrier (“I want a discussion—a dialogue,” he laments at one point), Tony finds his cousins to be hospitable hosts and excellent tour guides, even if he struggles to understand some of the nuances of their culture, such as their sometimes apathetic attitude toward the past. He also learns that his father had quite a storied reputation in town and a mysterious nickname Tony had never heard. As he tries to reconcile himself to the loss of his distant, sometimes-abusive father, whom he never felt he understood, Tony finds joy—and a newfound closeness with his late parent—in his efforts to fix up the farmhouse where his father spent much of his childhood. In the most compelling storyline in the book, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric, English-speaking painter named Artemis, known in town as a pazza, or crazy, for goatherding in traditional costume. The two bond over the challenges and pleasures of the artist’s life, their similar philosophical outlook and the immediate spark between them, but Artemis’ troubled past and Tony’s father’s secrets soon challenge their budding relationship. Unfortunately, not all of the Italian characters are as well-developed as Artemis, and Romeo is not quite a consummate writer. Early on, he slips distractingly in and out of past and present tense, and he occasionally falls back on stilted, overstated lines like: “It was beginning to dawn on me that not only was I going to learn about my father on this trip; I was also going to learn about myself.”
An admirable but uneven novel about the importance of family roots.
Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497582736
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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