by Virginia Pye ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2018
The question all these stories pose—“Don’t you find that most people prefer blindness?”—is answered by the hunger of Pye’s...
In these nine stories, novelist Pye (Dreams of the Red Phoenix, 2015, etc.) writes about characters who are blind to their own feelings, to the feelings of others, or to the world at large.
The particularly strong opener, “Best Man,” seems slightly sordid at first—a straight man attending the Reno wedding of his dying gay friend to an attractive woman thinks he’s becoming embroiled in a romantic triangle—only to evolve into a deeply moving meditation on the complexity and potential generosity of love. All of Pye’s characters are oblivious or ambivalent about the joys and costs of becoming aware. In “New Year’s Day,” a young teacher willing herself to ignore the world’s miseries clings to simplistic optimism until a semicloseted gay friend exposes her to upsetting yet exciting realities. Similarly, the librarian in “Her Mother’s Garden” feels both anger and relief when the sale of her dead parents’ home forces her to face a future beyond the narrow world she’s clung to. In “White Dog,” the inability or unwillingness of an aging bohemian painter and up-and-coming gallery owner to understand each other plays out in their reaction to a stray dog. In “Redbone,” another painter realizes too late his failure to acknowledge who he’s truly loved. “An Awesome Gap,” about a skateboarding middle schooler who wants his clueless father to understand his passion, beautifully captures the near hopeless yearning of all parents and children. “Easter Morning” also centers on family as men and women handle a young child’s grief over his dead bird differently but without the blindness found in most of this volume. The book’s weak link, “Crying in Italian,” about a woman seemingly plotting to leave her family, teases expectations too obviously to be effective. In the terrific title story, a young writer skates close to endangering his marriage by misinterpreting signals from a woman, assuming their long friendship may no longer be platonic.
The question all these stories pose—“Don’t you find that most people prefer blindness?”—is answered by the hunger of Pye’s characters to connect.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941209-82-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Press 53
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
by Virginia Pye
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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