An entertaining, well-realized portrait of life at the bottom of the food chain.
Nature overwhelms mankind in this engrossing eco-nightmare.
One day in the near future, long-suffering animals turn on their human oppressors. Bears and cougars run amok; man-eating rats pour out of the sewers; wasps and ants swarm the slow-of-foot; an “elite corps” of raccoons targets infants in the crib and pets everywhere leap for their masters’ throats. This doomsday scenario is too cute to be truly alarming–“[t]he squirrel growled, then bit a chunk out of Brad’s nose with teeth designed to crush walnuts”–but in this first volume of a planned trilogy, Matthews constructs a vividly imagined saga of post-apocalyptic civilization-building. Ten years later, humanity struggles to maintain isolated settlements, bartering for vital scraps of technology salvaged from the ruins, including Compton Pit, an underground complex in British Columbia powered by renewables and defended by animal-repelling ultrasonic noise generators. The Pit is led by solar-energy whiz Noah; outwardly-tough-but-inwardly-fragile security head Darcy; one-armed chief hunter Toffee, more feral than the beasts he kills; and the visionary Boss, who takes them to Vancouver–now a stronghold of crazed orca-worshippers–to find a trove of photovoltaic cells. Their culture is a hard-scrabble inversion of the current model of pampered material excess, as they scrimp for scarce food, clothing and medicines, carefully ration electricity and water and scour the Pacific Northwest for irreplaceable truck parts and electronics components, ever vigilant of the ceaseless attacks of animals and human raiders. Though the bloated narrative affords the characters too much time to ruminate, the interplay of gritty survivalism and rapid-fire action yields a page-turner, throughout which the author has also deftly woven themes of environmentalism and conservation.
An entertaining, well-realized portrait of life at the bottom of the food chain.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2005
ISBN: 81-88811-21-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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