by Ginger Bensman ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An often elegantly crafted story that explores the love between parents and their children and how people come to terms with...
A woman discovers that she’s the reincarnated spirit of an Inca warrior in this imaginative debut novel.
When young emergency room doctor Megan Kimsey’s father passes away unexpectedly, her world collapses. Strange visions, similar to those she had as a child, start to intrude on her life. Then she finds a package from her late father containing a ticket to an archaeological conference in Bogotà, Colombia. It turns out Megan became an object of intense academic curiosity after her father sent copies of her unusual childhood drawings to a prominent researcher. Against her family’s strong objections (particularly those of her overbearing mother), she travels to South America, where she gets caught up in an Indiana Jones–style adventure as she strives to discover the truth about her paranormal gifts. Wisely, Bensman never attempts to offer a logical explanation for the origins of Megan’s mysterious visions, which involve troubling memories of a child sacrifice. Rather, she simply presents these past-life experiences as fact and then uses them to explore the effects of trauma on the human psyche. When Megan was a child, a girl that she cared for died under tragic circumstances; by succumbing to her visions, Megan is able to achieve a measure of closure for both herself and for Illapa, the father of the sacrificed child who died centuries earlier. The passages that describe Megan’s journeys to the distant past are among the book’s most affecting. Less effective, though, are the scenes set in Colorado before Megan goes to Colombia. This back story is important, but the writing lacks the verve of the later chapters. Particularly sluggish are the sections dealing with Megan and her mother, as there’s no resolution to their conflict. But once the action shifts to South America, the novel becomes brisk and engaging as dashes of action and romance enliven the otherwise serious story. Also impressive is Bensman’s commitment to authentic historical and linguistic details, which effectively transport readers to the Colombian milieu.
An often elegantly crafted story that explores the love between parents and their children and how people come to terms with the loss of loved ones.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Horn Rimmed Editions
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Best Books Of 2015
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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