by Walter Lubars ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2014
An account of 20th-century immigration and assimilation that’s sometimes engrossing, but at other times laborious.
The fates of two Jewish families intersect when they immigrate to America in Lubars’ (The Monterey Marauders, 2014) second novel.
In 1913, the job prospects for promising young teacher Chatzke Rozan are dwindling, as more and more of his fellow Jews are leaving Warsaw for America. At the insistence of his wife, Leah, he sails for Ellis Island himself and soon builds a life in the Bronx. However, World War I and numerous financial setbacks trap Leah and their children, Sarah and Aaron, in Poland for several more years. When the Rozans finally arrive in the United States, Aaron quickly leaves the family and takes up with communist sympathizers, while Sarah refuses a series of suitors before settling on bad-boy Brooklynite Abe Landers. The book’s most harrowing, moving passages recount the tragic deaths of Abe’s father and siblings as they struggle to escape Russia for America, where Abe trades school for pool halls and the company of low-level gangsters. He eventually marries Sarah in 1925 and gets a steady bank job, but his restlessness soon leads him back to the pool rooms. Sarah, meanwhile, lives with her husband’s violent mood swings and her own health complications. In addition to these domestic dramas, the Rozan and Landers clans grapple with the Great Depression, and later, the Holocaust, which they hopelessly read about from the safety of America’s shores. Lubars recreates these historical periods with great care and accuracy, and he has a particular talent for showing the optimism of immigrants. For example, the Statue of Library’s torch, one says, “means that everybody in America will be kept warm.” He also effectively shows how such good feelings can eventually flame out when faced with America’s harsh realities. As the novel goes on, however, it consistently relies upon the same narrative devices—particularly Abe’s tiresome misbehavior and the distances that both families travel when they need, must repay, or have been scammed out of money.
An account of 20th-century immigration and assimilation that’s sometimes engrossing, but at other times laborious.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4952-2306-8
Page Count: 478
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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