A clunky dystopian novel that tries to tell a story about love defying prejudice but fails to imagine it with any...
In her debut novel, Haworth creates a post-apocalyptic America where gender prejudice rules society.
Cloistered in the few cities that have survived in a world devastated by a major—and somehow forgotten—environmental disaster, the human race has also forgotten the concept of what a “woman” is. People born with the misfortune of two X chromosomes are called “Y-negatives” and treated as inferior, forced to have children via “surrogacies,” then sterilized and turned out into the world as “andros” who constantly shoot up with testosterone to emulate the dominating “mascs.” Class, status, and opportunity divide sharply along these gender lines, and heterosexuality is an aberration. The worldbuilding is heavy on dystopian detail but lacks a sense of logical continuity or believability beyond the immediate storyline. Why is the world like this? Nobody seems to know. Certainly not Ember, an andro who feels that he is really a masc, or Jess, a masc with a sympathetic nature and privileged upbringing. When the two start falling for each other while on a maintenance trip through the desolate wilderness of Arkansas, they find themselves struggling against society’s vicious prejudices as well as their own, in between repairing scientific equipment and fighting off “scavengers” from a mysterious settlement. The novel alternates between their first-person voices, and both Jess and Ember are unfortunately grating and frequently dim. Without brightly drawn characters or energetic voices, the story slogs through stale romantic incident and awkward, unsophisticated prose. Instead of offering insight into gender and sexuality, Haworth creates a world that has eradicated femininity without making a strong statement about why it chose to do so.
A clunky dystopian novel that tries to tell a story about love defying prejudice but fails to imagine it with any believability.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62649-334-6
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Riptide
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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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