A pleasant tale for readers who want a female-centric Harry Potter story.
A young teenager loses her home and employs magic to figure out what went wrong in this debut novel.
Silent “Sie” Lee finds her life in an uproar. First, her guardian and great aunt, Generous, dies under mysterious circumstances. Then, Sie’s mostly absent mother, Mauvaise—who has a covert job the teen suspects involves spying—ships the 14-year-old to live with her rowdy relatives. They exile Sie to the attic and force her to attend a public school where she’s very out of her depth. Little do they know that Sie is used to a different world altogether. At Gen’s, the teen would come and go via the house’s side door into a Boston of old, with horse-drawn carriages, curiosity shops, and, most importantly, the Girl’s Academy of Latin and Alchemy, where Sie learns the ways of magic. With public school out for the summer and Sie’s relatives on vacation, the plucky teen employs the help of classmate Raahi—who has literal “tunnel vision” and an enthusiasm for books and learning—to discover what exactly happened to Gen and why Sie’s mother is now selling the house. Judging from the long author’s note at the end of the book, Hiam is very passionate about Boston and the magically realistic history he has created around it. The Harry Potter–like Sie is intelligent and resourceful—she is determined to find out what happened to her beloved great aunt and devoted to her spellcasting studies—and Raahi is an appealing, affable sidekick. The author’s dialogue tends toward the stiff (Gen says “Tut tut” more than once) and awkward. At one point, a school secretary comments on Sie’s last name, saying, “I’d expected she’d be Korean or Chinese.” In addition, Sie seems more confused (by everything from debit cards to milkshakes) than is realistic for someone who’s lived in the modern world for a few months by now. Still, the novel is short, digestible, and adventurous but not too dark, ideal for teens transitioning to middle-grade novels.
A pleasant tale for readers who want a female-centric Harry Potter story.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63558-011-2
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Webster Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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