A charming fable written for adults: a marvelous portrait of the intersection between childhood innocence and grownup...
Delightful debut by retired physician Newton: a historical fantasy about two brothers who run away from home during WWII and buy an old streetcar that eventually helps England win the Battle of Britain.
Growing up on a big estate in Sussex, Duncan and Wilfred Scrutton see their parents only once a week, for lunch on Wednesdays. As a result of such isolation, partly, the boys grow exceptionally close. Duncan has a close call with a brain fever; he survives, but the disease ages him a good ten years and leaves him almost completely mute. After their mother elopes with her lover and their father descends into an abyss of depression and debauchery, the boys decide they’ve had enough of family life and run away. In London, they buy an old streetcar for two pounds, then for another ten shillings find a somewhat derelict horse to pull it. Horse-drawn trams had gone the way of the dodo by the late 1930s, and the brothers take advantage of a loophole in the franchise laws that allows them to run it without a license (which would never have been awarded to two boys in their early teens). To their own surprise, they’re a great success: With the cloud of war hovering over them, people become nostalgic for the old days and go out of their way to ride the boys’ tram. Eventually, Duncan and Wilfred are able to expand their business, even acquiring an electric tram in exchange for a rare butterfly they’ve caught. When the Germans begin their bombing raids in 1940, however, Duncan moves the tram to a pier on the Channel and converts it to a signaling station. He even manages to shoot down a Stuka with a catapult from the tram’s roof—a feat that makes the boys famous across the length of Britain and results in a visit from the King and Queen.
A charming fable written for adults: a marvelous portrait of the intersection between childhood innocence and grownup experience.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2003
ISBN: 1-58234-374-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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
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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