A fun, slightly dangerous drive through the car-culture canyon.
From Beauchamp (Skintight, 2014), a novel about adventures in and around a 1963 Ford Galaxie.
Behold, Ford’s 60 millionth car: “A 1963½ Galaxie 500 XL Sport Roof, Rangoon Red on black, Z-code 390, 4-speed transmission.” So begins the story of a vehicle that will see more than its share of adventures. For its first seven years and 141,970 miles, a Lewisville man drives the car up and down the state highways. Throughout its life, the Galaxie is driven, fixed, and loved by many as it wheels through teenage drag racing, picks up women of questionable character, and has a close encounter with a opossum. Eventually, a mechanic in the year 2042 says, “I was struck by just how different the Galaxie was….Built not just for speed, but for sex appeal.” This future is a funny one in which internal combustion engines are banned (thanks, readers are told, to the “Gore Act”) and Siri-like voices have become a bit too powerful: “ ‘Shut up, you jabbering bitch,’ I pounded my fist on the dash. The car’s voice didn’t miss a beat, telling me I had travelled seventeen miles with no apparent destination.” When the Galaxie isn’t being driven, it’s being repaired or longed for: “She didn’t want the car, but she’d taken it because she knew how bad it would hurt Dorsey to lose it.” The narrative—as speedy as the title suggests—roars with engine-speak (“The 390 initially refused to confine its combustion to the internal side. It leaked oil like a sieve and smoked like a freight train”) and devil-may-care drivers/passengers/admirers: “ ‘This is a nice car,’ she said. ‘I gave my first blowjob in a car like this.’ ” All the while, clean prose details the complex human-machine relationship, which, Beauchamp shows, ages well. “I see only the machine’s after-image,” says one of the Galaxie’s many drivers, “a flickering zoetrope ghost in the place it, and I, had been only seconds earlier.” Though embracing car culture, the tale gives a little slap on the butt for good measure.
A fun, slightly dangerous drive through the car-culture canyon.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939156-04-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ink Smith Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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