Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hinton, S. E. - Patty Campbell (review date 2 April 1989)

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Patty Campbell (review date 2 April 1989)

SOURCE: A review of Taming the Star Runner, in The New York Times Book Review, April 2, 1989, p. 26.

[In the following review, Campbell offers praise for the compelling nature of Taming the Star Runner as well as for the authenticity of its characters, but finds fault with Hinton's use of the horse as a symbol.]

"His boot felt empty without his knife in it," begins S. E. Hinton's fifth novel, Taming the Star Runner. A young hood, desperately tough and desperately vulnerable, is on his way to exile on his uncle's horse ranch—and in one paragraph the reader is back in familiar Hinton country after a hiatus of 10 years. What bearing does this new book have on the literary and popular reputation of Susan Eloise Hinton, who at 16 wrote The Outsiders, a novel that, in 1967, gave birth to the new realism in adolescent literature, and who has since achieved almost mythical...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Zena Sutherland (essay date 27 January 1968)
   2. Times Literary Supplement (review date 30 October 1970)
   3. Jane Powell (review date 2 April 1976)
   4. S. E. Hinton with Lisa Ehrichs (interview date November 1981)
   5. Gene Lyons (essay date 11 October 1982)
   6. Jay Scott (essay date April 1983)
   7. Michael Malone (essay date 8 March 1986)
   8. Charlene Strickland (review date October 1988)
   9. Elizabeth Ward (review date 12 February 1989)
   10. Patty Campbell (review date 2 April 1989)
   11. Charles Solomon (review date 12 August 1990)
   12. Steven L. VanderStaay (essay date November 1992)
   13. Susanna Rodell (review date 19 November 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. S. E. Hinton