A solid debut set in the demanding world of high school distance runners, lit with pathos and humor.
A ninth-grade distance runner learns the meanings of loyalty, compassion, brotherhood, and self-reliance in Kenley’s lively debut coming-of-age novel.
When ninth-grader Sherman Kindle joins the cross-country track team at Pennsgap High School in rural Indiana, he has many more questions than answers. Why is his profanity-prone coach, Joel Viddstein, sleeping on the floor of the wrestling room? (It turns out to be only one of many crises in the coach’s dysfunctional life.) Can Kindle possibly keep up with teammate Adam Keane, who can easily run two miles in 10 minutes and 32 seconds? Can he also compete with his own annoying identical twin, Hyter? The stakes mount as the season unfolds, as their lowly team, the Snapping Turtles, goes up against the Ridgeline Salukis, a team so strong that it runs eight miles to a meet, wins, then runs all the way back to its school. Perhaps worse, the coach obsesses over what he calls “the loins” and forbids his team from having any sex during the season. In a hilarious exchange, Hyter says that he needs to know if he can still masturbate five or six times a day; “Son,” the coach replies, “I’m amazed you even have the energy to stand.” Set in an era when mullets and big hair ruled, the story often sparkles with the unique humor of adolescent life. For example, when rough-hewn team captain and senior Jeff Slade asks Kindle to hook him up with a well-developed freshman girl, Kindle agrees reluctantly but worries that she’ll be hurt. To scare her off, he tells her that Slade will spank her, tie her up, and keep her as his sex slave in the back of his van. “Sold,” she says with a purr. However, the narrative does slow occasionally when describing running technicalities that will mainly appeal to other runners. Just as the grueling regimen strengthens his muscles, Kindle matures as a character as a result of weathering conflicts, and just as his character arc rises as the plot unwinds, the coach’s falls in counterpoint. In the end, Kindle, the team, and their coach share a well-earned moment of grace that readers will feel they deserve.
A solid debut set in the demanding world of high school distance runners, lit with pathos and humor.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940595-22-1
Page Count: 276
Publisher: River's Edge Media
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
