bookshelf

THE RACE

Name: THE RACE
Author: Nina Allan
ISBN: 978-1-907069-70-3

by Nina Allan ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2016

One spectacular sci-fi novella dragged down by three tedious ones.

bookshelf

Four semi-intertwined novellas featuring genetically engineered dogs and a troubled family.

Jenna and her brother, Del, live in a future England ravaged by war and environmental disaster. The seaside town they live in, Sapphire, is dominated by illegal greyhound racing. The dogs, called “smartdogs,” are genetically modified with human DNA, facilitating a telepathic link with humans whose brains have been implanted with special chips. Jenna’s and her brother’s lives quickly unravel, though, when their niece, Maree, is kidnapped. This tautly written first novella creates a brilliantly weird world that’s utterly riveting—which makes it especially disappointing when the next one reveals that everything you’ve read was created by a woman named Christy, who lives in present-day England with her brother, Derek. Christy dreamed up that world to escape from her life after her mother abandoned their family and her brother became increasingly violent. When Derek’s girlfriend vanishes, Christie suspects the worst. This story should be fraught, but instead it’s flabby and inert, save for a stomach-turning assault that feels as if it’s only there to shock. The next novella jumps ahead 20 years and is told from the point of view of Alex, who’s acquainted with Derek’s vanished girlfriend. Christy seeks him out to determine what happened to her, but instead the narrative gets bogged down by details of Alex’s life and an unsubtle, tin-eared examination of the racism he’s experienced. The final novella returns to the first’s dystopian future, although readers will likely find it difficult to work up enthusiasm for this now doubly fictional world. Maree is now a young adult with no memory of her family. She’s able to communicate with smartdogs without a neural implant and was raised with other psychic children as part of a scientific program. When she finds out details of her past, she’s left to decide her own fate. The book ends with a baffling and extraneous appendix of short pieces drawn from both fictional universes, which read like writing exercises that were never meant to see the light of day.

One spectacular sci-fi novella dragged down by three tedious ones.

Pub Date: July 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-907069-70-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Titan Books

Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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.