Highlights of the Off-season (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

Smith, Peter

3.75

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780140102925: Highlights of the Off-season (Contemporary American Fiction)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140102922 ISBN 13: 9780140102925

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1987

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In this coming-of-age story, Sam Grace, on vacation from prep school, is held hostage by the manager of a supermarket, nearly killed by a young couple he has befriended, and rejected by a beautiful former classmate

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From School Library Journal:

YA Once YAs have made it through the first two long and digressive chapters, they'll identify with disillusioned Sam Grace, who does not have it all together, and to whom all things are importantelevator inspectors, for instance. Rich-kid Sam is asked to leave his prep school and so launches upon a series of adventures in California, New York, and Cape Cod. He finds little to like or to admire in the places he goes or in the strange and not-so-strange characters he meets, but he tries. His efforts are occasionally moving and often funny. Some of Smith's characters are overdrawn; they are too much alike, particularly in dialogue. Sam's occasional destructiveness is disturbing, although in character. In this first novel, Smith presents a Holden Caulfield-like character study with no explanations or resolution. His touch for replicating adolescent thinking in a humorous and generally sympathetic way is what makes this book worth reading. Sally Bates, Houston Public Library
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

The sequel to Most Cunning Workmen and A Gathering of Ghosts is a must for the British author's enthusiastic following. This spellbinder opens with Lewis again drawing his modest hero Arnold Landon into a net cast by unscrupulous types who scheme to pass as philanthropists while fraudulently acquiring rights to a Northumbrian farm. The owner is frail, timid Sarah Ellis, but her companion, Mildred Sauvage-Brown, is a brawny and truculent woman who protests that the condemnation of the site means destroying natural treasures. As the planning inspector, Landon agrees, but their case is dismissed and the developers are triumphant until Sarah Ellis is found murdered. The missal that the woman had compulsively clutched disappears, which gives Landon a clue as to her murderer and the surprising denouement when he and Sauvage-Brown are face-to-face with the killer. Original and skillfully constructed, the latest Landon adventure deserves an A-plus.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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