The plot is imaginative and otherworldly, but the biggest draw is the down-to-earth, indelible cast of characters.
In Arnett’s debut fantasy, a boy who becomes a seaman in the early 1800s somehow finds himself in the mid-20th century, where he befriends a young Aussie girl.
A mute boy discovers a wounded girl on the beach in 1820s England. With her throat slashed, she seemingly transfers her essence to the boy before dying. Mr. Douglas, father to now deceased Annie, names the boy Mick and gets him a job aboard the Ariel, where Douglas also works. After a decade, Mick, about 18 years old, is still a crewman on the ship, which regularly transports convicts to Australia. His only source of friction is crew member Mallar, who has a disturbing affinity for young children and a hatred of most people, particularly those of color. Mick is suddenly alone in Australia, where he meets Maddie, an Annie look-alike. It’s 1955, and Mick can’t explain how he got there or his newfound healing ability. The novel subsequently toggles between time periods as Mick and Maddie become close friends. Unfortunately, Mallar somehow crops up in both centuries as well, planning a mutiny on the ship and harboring deadly intent toward Maddie. Although Arnett drops a few hints to explain Mick’s time travel, the author concentrates on a multifaceted cast. Mick is a sympathetic protagonist, but others on the Ariel are equally memorable, especially Douglas and Jimbo, an African whom Capt. Roy helped get out of slavery. In the 20th century, however, Mick can’t quite steal the spotlight from endearingly bossy Maddie or her canine companion, Miss Judy, who practically demands people shake her paw. Though Arnett’s prose is simple and unadorned, descriptions of violence perpetrated by Mallar are unquestionably harrowing. But the novel is also frequently charming, especially when exploring Mick’s fascination with 1955 automobiles and cinema.
The plot is imaginative and otherworldly, but the biggest draw is the down-to-earth, indelible cast of characters.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79330-937-2
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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