by Marcus Burke ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2014
Burke crafts a street-smart tale of the possibilities and temptations of growing up. There is power in his words, and the...
A wonderful debut novel that moves with the rhythm of the streets.
Andre Battel’s Jamaican grandfather calls him “champion,” after the winner of a TV show they watch every morning over breakfast. Pa-Paw teaches him to cook eggs and tries to keep him on the level. That's a tough goal for a 10-year-old whose father smokes weed to fuel his fantasies of being a reggae drummer. The streets of Milton, Mass., come alive in these pages, thumping with music and the smell of burning blunts. Andre dribbles through the crowds on the corners and past the girls showing their stuff at school, on his way up the basketball ladder as a winner, a champion. But there's much that's beyond his control. His father disappears for months at a time. School becomes only a measure of his powerlessness as he questions authority and its consequences. He starts running errands for Team Seven, the local pot-selling gang he joins at age 11, making the “munchies run” for the older guys. He earns money for these errands and learns what is cool and what is not in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone’s business. Andre narrates most of the book in the first person, and as he ages, the rhythm of his speech gains steam and he speaks more and more the street code of Team Seven. He graduates to dealing drugs and smoking his product for a continuous buzz. Burke’s words meld with Andre’s progression into hell until "the dark cloud over my head exploded, it was like the perfect storm and felt like watching a nurse jab a needle into my arm.” The deluge is a shooting that can make or break this young man’s life.
Burke crafts a street-smart tale of the possibilities and temptations of growing up. There is power in his words, and the tale moves like a locomotive right to the end.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-53779-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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