A touching exploration of identity and reinvention painted with gentle yet precise brush strokes.
In Hoang’s assured debut, a young artist makes peace with a crushing diagnosis and takes a stab at reinvention.
What would you do if your very identity were about to be erased? That’s the fundamental question Aubrey Johnson must answer—quickly. At the novel’s outset, the young, talented painter is handed a damning diagnosis: retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder that will blind her in six to eight weeks. As Aubrey tries to wrap her head around her condition, she runs into an old friend, Jeff Anderson. Jeff and Aubs had been best friends in high school before life took them on separate paths. Now Jeff is back, suggesting Aubrey accompany him on a trip around the world. Aubrey grabs at the chance to pack as many life-altering experiences as she can in a few weeks, while Jeff in turn is seeking some clarity in his own personal life. The novel’s central premise—a gifted painter losing her vision—might seem too neat a hook on which to hang a story, yet Hoang successfully prevents the narrative from spiraling into cliché. Insights that Aubrey slowly gathers—“Maybe the question you should be asking yourself is why you feel like what you have isn’t enough”—sometimes come across as trite life lessons, but they are more than made up for with flashes of inspired writing. Aubrey narrates the story, which has touches of romance, in the first person, and Hoang’s characterization is so impressive that the novel reads like a memoir. Readers see the world (China, India, Jordan, Israel, Brazil, Peru) through Aubrey’s artistic point of view, the result of which is often refreshing. She describes the Dead Sea, for example, as a place with “a lack of visual noise.” Despite having been dealt a cruel hand, Aubrey still has a lot going for her, including caring friends and a career that blossomed early. Her imagination first flourished after a visit to the Rothko Chapel in Houston, known for its dark, somber modern art. In contrast—and reassuringly—Aubrey’s artistic vision continues to shine plenty of light even as the natural world around her slowly fades to black.
A touching exploration of identity and reinvention painted with gentle yet precise brush strokes.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Hey Jamie
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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