Charlie’s cleareyed account delivers a powerful anti-war statement without a hint of pedantry
All things considered, Charlie had been having a pretty good summer.
He had a new friend in his refugee neighbor Pavel “Pav” Duda, a new man cave (actually an old shed), and a new way to get Erin F’s attention. But his life changes completely when Old Country tries to bomb Little Town to smithereens. It is tempting to overlay current political unrest onto this novel, but by naming the warring regions Little Town and Old Country, Conaghan creates a timeless allegory. The differences between the people of Little Town and Old Country are not disclosed, but Pav’s name, speech, and blue eyes are used to mark him as an “Old Country bastard.” Charlie and the other Little Town citizens speak a “lingo” characterized by idioms and colloquialisms that separates them both from our reality and from Old Country refugees like Pav, whose command of the grammar is shaky. This lingo, together with Charlie’s sense of humor, makes the tone deceptively light. The slow pace allows the tension to build imperceptibly, like a crane lifting an anvil over the heads of unsuspecting readers. Conaghan tackles the complexities of war, occupation, and totalitarianism in a direct and accessible way, portraying violence frankly but without sensationalism. Charlie’s understanding of what is taught about others versus what is actually the truth speaks volumes.
Charlie’s cleareyed account delivers a powerful anti-war statement without a hint of pedantry .(Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61963-838-9
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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