A first novel, Texas-set, about a young man who comes of age by way of his obsession with tornadoes, the cancerous death of his father, and a love affair with a Native American. What could be melodramatic in other hands, short-story writer and dramatist Hauptman (Big River, etc.) spins out into a fine heartland novel, evocative and moving. Burl Drennan returns to his hometown of Nortex (which is ``like a black hole'' where ``the force of gravity'' is too strong to resist) and lives in the Sands Motel after his rock band, a would-be ticket to the big time, dissolves. He gets a job working for the railroad and also experiences a twister of such force that it flattens the town: ``Nortex had finally made the national news.'' The force of the twister becomes a touchstone for Burl (and for the entire town), and he becomes addicted to twisters, even drives the range looking for them. Meanwhile, his father discovers that he has terminal cancer, though he fights it for a good long time before it takes him near the end of the novel, when one character, empathizing with Burl, says that ``It seems like everybody's getting it. They say it's something in the water.'' Before the close, though, in which Burl faces his fate and goes off to school to study meteorology, he becomes an amateur expert on storms (in part by finding a sort of guru, full of near-mystical information on funnels) and has an affair with Bebe Sanchez. Hauptman tells Burl's story against a backdrop of the town rebuilding itself, deftly incorporates religion, and otherwise makes nary a wrong move while meditating on fate and love before ending the narrative with a railroad wreck and its aftermath. This one is a find, conveying mystery and hard-edged wonder while evoking a Texas that will be difficult for readers to forget.
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-553-08017-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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
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