by Beverley Hopwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 2014
A quiet, skillful novel about keeping Inuit traditions and family harmony.
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A novel about an unusual summer in a changing world.
Hopwood (Gladys & Jack, 2012, etc.) sets her novel in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, on Frobisher Bay. Rosa Mama is an old Inuit woman who’s seen her town change remarkably over her lifetime. (By the story’s end, she’s even outlived two husbands.) But she’s never before seen a summer when the ice in the bay refused to melt. Iqaluit receives supplies of all kinds from the south, but with an unusually cold summer, boats can’t come in, and planes can barely land. This casts the whole town back to a way of life that’s unfamiliar to most residents, and it prompts the Inuit community to turn to its elders to learn how to survive without modern conveniences. Community leaders organize trips to hunt for caribou, musk-ox, hare, ground squirrels and even seals, which Rosa Mama regards as a blessing in the turmoil of the frozen summer. “I smiled,” she says at a town meeting where hunters assemble. “It reminded me of other years in akunahhee—the season of starvation between winter and summer; but this was new. It was a season of starvation between summer and winter.” As the town contends with its unusual summer, more and more people are willing to listen to Rosa Mama and her peers discuss the way life once was. The joy is cut short, however, when Rosa Mama’s husband, Joe, dies in his kayak on a seal-hunting trip. Their grandson, Adam, witnessed the incident, and it’s up to Rosa Mama to hold her family together long enough to learn the truth about what happened. Hopwood’s novel, written from Rosa Mama’s point of view, effectively captures the outlook of an old woman who knows more than people give her credit for and who cares deeply for those around her. The author also makes a point of including details, such as Inuktitut words, that continuously remind readers of the culture in which the story is set. The book is short, but it contains an extended meditation on traditional culture and progress, as well as a portrait of how families manage tragedy and difficult times. Readers who are interested in the lives of modern Inuit people will be intrigued, but the book will appeal to a much broader niche, as well. The love Rosa Mama has for her family and her home is the story’s central thread, and it’s a fulfilling one.
A quiet, skillful novel about keeping Inuit traditions and family harmony.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499077728
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
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
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