A clever exploration of our essence, communication, and how our societies are organized.
When is a dog not a dog? Two Greek gods bet on what would happen to 15 unsuspecting canines if they were granted human intelligence.
Alexis (Pastoral, 2014, etc.) devises an inventive romp through the nature of humanity in this beautiful, entertaining read. Apollo and Hermes debate what, if anything, sets humans apart from other mortal beings—a question that is more frequently part of today’s conversations among scientists about consciousness. Settling on intelligence, they enable a random group of mutts, poodles, retrievers, and other breeds to develop their own language, comprehend human language, and understand the passing of time. But the book’s central quest is to explore the possibility for happiness—and whether intelligence hinders or helps this. In their new state of awareness, the dogs escape from a veterinary clinic and form a pack in a city park. Armed with human capabilities, they jockey for power and quarrel over how these gifts should be used. The group's leader, a mastiff named Atticus, fears change, thinking “a pack needed unity, and unity meant that all understood the world in the same way or, if not the world, the rules, at least.” The pack’s poet, who entrances some and disturbs others with his original musings in their new language, is marked for elimination by Atticus, who bans the language as unnatural for dogs. Readers spend most of their time with Majnoun, a poodle who develops a symbiotic relationship with a woman who takes him in, as he encounters other survivors from his pack. To him, “the line between natural (the things Majnoun couldn’t help doing) and cultural (the things he could) was neither clear nor fixed.”
A clever exploration of our essence, communication, and how our societies are organized.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55245-305-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Coach House Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
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