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
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
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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