Despite an inconsistent narrative style, an entertaining and imaginative fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s plays.
A bizarre object transports a teenager from the late 19th century to a world of Shakespearean magic and mystery in this debut YA novel.
Guided by a clue left by her grandmother, 14-year-old Alda finds a small, bubblelike object that shockingly transfers her from her 19th-century cottage to a pirate ship at sea. Her sudden appearance startles cabin boy Dreng, whom she will meet again in this Shakespearean fantasy that is woven from an atmospheric patchwork of elements from Hamlet (the Danish prince has a cameo as a prisoner on the pirate ship), Macbeth, and, especially, The Tempest. During an encounter with three bony, cackling figures on a fog-shrouded moor, Alda learns that the magical item that has brought her there is called a “cauldron’s bubble” (and that her grandmother may have been a member of this “wayward and weird” witches’ coven). Time shifts as Alda’s multiple strange journeys take her back to her own childhood, to a talking raven in a desolate desert canyon, to Dreng’s storm-tossed ship, and to a “between worlds” place called Netherfeld, where she ages two years with only gradually surfacing memories of what happens there. Thanks to witchy trickery, Alda ends up trapped on the haunted island where the lethal spirits are controlled by Prospero’s enslaved Ariel (depicted as a harpy of mythology). There, Alda’s fate becomes cleverly intertwined with naiads and dryads, a shipwrecked and now grown-up Dreng (who meets the ghost of his murdered father), the malformed and hapless Caliban, and a disturbingly proactive Miranda. Elby intermittently sustains a Bard-like sensibility in this overloaded but inventive story through an informed sprinkling of paraphrased and near quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, occasional puns, brief soliloquies, portentous scenes, and blank verse rhythms. (The witches: “Who is the girl?” / “Not who, what?”/ “A bearer?”/ “A sister?” / “A knower or a seer?”) The ending of this enjoyable tale, the first installment of a trilogy, skillfully telegraphs more mystery and adventures to come. In the upcoming Book 2 (Double, Double Toil), Alda’s odyssey of self-discovery will continue (along with Elby’s mining of further Shakespeare classics).
Despite an inconsistent narrative style, an entertaining and imaginative fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s plays.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974404-70-4
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Verdopolis Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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