Solid apocalyptic fiction that focuses more on its character relationships than its sci-fi elements.
In this debut YA thriller, the leftovers of an unexplained apocalypse struggle to survive and find meaning in the wreckage.
After a drunken camping trip with his friends, teenage Zephyr Rockwell awakes to find that everyone he knows—indeed, the entire population of his hometown—has vanished into thin air aside from piles of clothes littering Firefly Valley. He soon excludes mundane reasons for the disappearances, such as a mass exodus or a horrible misunderstanding, but the implications of the seemingly supernatural event are still hard for him to grasp. The lights are still on and food is still easy to find, but Zeph’s plans to scavenge local businesses are soon interrupted when he encounters another survivor, Ross Williams, while breaking into a gun shop. They join forces to explore the town’s new landscape, which is scarred by the ruins of cars and trucks that were speeding down Firefly Valley’s streets at the time of their drivers’ disappearances. Zeph’s initial enthusiasm for a new ally soon begins to dwindle when he notices clues that Ross’ benevolent, cheery manners hide a darker, less stable interior. Soon, the pair’s temporary alliance is broken and Zephyr flees Firefly Valley with another survivor he’s found, a young girl named Jordan. They make other scattered friends along the way as they try to make a new home in a newly abandoned America. The great vanishing, while an ever present mystery, isn’t really Zephyr’s main concern as the story goes on, which can make it difficult for readers to see where it’s all leading. However, this also means that Casamassina’s novel avoids getting bogged down by a standard, predictable plot arc. It’s also nice to see such a cynical protagonist in a YA novel rather than one that’s overwhelmed with shock after a calamity; Zephyr often gives sharp warnings that are regularly ignored by adult travelers, often with disastrous consequences. The resulting tone allows the book to delve into darker territory than many other YA tales.
Solid apocalyptic fiction that focuses more on its character relationships than its sci-fi elements.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9984924-1-4
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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