A triumphant YA novel that explores what can be found when everything is lost.
An immensely satisfying coming-of-age story wrapped around an intriguing adventure.
Affluent, popular and athletic, high school junior Jack Morrison had everything, and everything to lose. His life begins to derail when his mother dies of cancer. His father soon remarries and then gets charged with involvement in a Ponzi scheme, two events of nearly equivalent grimness to Jack. But misfortune is in store for Jack. His 5-year-old brother, Danny, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. With an incarcerated father, deceased mother and AWOL stepmother, Jack assumes the role of primary caretaker. Instead of taking Danny for the recommended, but ultimately futile, treatments, Jack and his childhood friend Jill decide to try to fulfill Danny’s wishes by embarking on a quest to the Arctic Circle to find the polar bear Kunik. The great bear is featured in an Inuit legend handed down from Jack’s great-grandmother and is believed to escort dying people to Nanuqpakma. The road to the Arctic Circle is, of course, paved with numerous external obstacles and emotional struggles. The pace of the action is exactly what it should be—fast enough to keep readers turning pages but slow enough to allow emotional nuances to develop. Heninger (Eyes in the Stone, 2007, etc.) applies an appealing sense of magic and spiritual possibility in this work. He seems to have a good ear for the ways that people of various ages and ethnicities speak; dialogue is natural and believable. Character development is generally excellent, with even minor characters deftly portrayed in a few swift strokes. The disappointing exception is the stepmother, Claire, a one-dimensional gold digger so unmoved by Danny’s cancer that she can’t even trouble herself to return calls from his oncologist. For a woman so hurt by her first husband’s premature death that she attended a grief group (where she met Jack and Danny’s father), this callousness begs for more explanation. However, this sort of misstep can be overlooked in a work of this overall quality. Building on its strengths, the book’s intensity increases until the emotionally gratifying conclusion.
A triumphant YA novel that explores what can be found when everything is lost.Pub Date: May 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469931746
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
In addition to the supernatural elements, Brosgol interweaves some savvy insights about the illusion of perfection and...
A deliciously creepy page-turning gem from first-time writer and illustrator Brosgol finds brooding teenager Anya trying to escape the past—both her own and the ghost haunting her.
Anya feels out of place at her preppy private school; embarrassed by her Russian heritage, she has worked hard to lose her accent and to look more like everyone else. After a particularly frustrating morning at the bus stop, Anya storms off, only to accidentally fall down a well. Down in the dark hole, she meets Emily, a ghost who claims to be a murder victim trapped down in the dank abyss for 90 years. With Emily’s help, Anya manages to escape, though once free, she learns that Emily has traveled out with her. At first, Emily seems like the perfect friend; however, once her motives become clear, Anya learns that “perfect” may only be an illusion. A moodily atmospheric spectrum of grays washes over the clean, tidy panels, setting a distinct stage before the first words appear. Brosgol’s tight storytelling invokes the chilling feeling of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), though for a decidedly older set.
In addition to the supernatural elements, Brosgol interweaves some savvy insights about the illusion of perfection and outward appearance. (Graphic supernatural fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59643-552-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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