An intriguing, if overlong, story of a fun-loving guy’s quest for understanding.
Whelihan offers a rollicking historical YA novel about a cross-country road trip in 1969.
High school graduate Brian Hamner wants to have a summer adventure before he gets serious about his future. His plan is to travel south from Minnesota across the United States in a leisurely manner, before eventually ending up in Florida where his aunt and uncle live. Brian hopes for more than just a good time, and his chances of this look good when his parents send him off in a new Volkswagen van; he’s hoping to meet people who, like him, struggle with dysgraphia, a learning disorder that affects one’s ability to write. With Steppenwolf blaring on the radio and various things on his mind, including the Vietnam draft, a high school sweetheart, and the possibility of going to college in the fall, he sets off on a road trip that leads him on a series of adventures. From the get-go, this first-person narrative, which includes a series of journal entries, is riddled with misspelled words, similar to what a dysgraphic writer might write. About graduation night, Brian notes that “Our souperintendent is calling out names” and compares the chair on which he’s sitting to “a piece of pliewould.” This style becomes tedious at times, but it’s used in an intriguing way; it becomes less prevalent as Brian learns strategies to live with the disorder, which gives readers a realistic sense of his experience. As a character, Brian feels a bit emotionally flat, but he has a delightful sense of humor, as when he calls troublesome words that sound alike “homophones or homophonies if they aren’t real werds.” The book is somewhat overloaded with dialogue, but a few of the teachers that the protagonist meets on the road—including a sightless hot dog vendor and a talking raven, whom Brian meets while smoking a “doobee” by the river—deliver some important insights. A classic 1960s rock soundtrack keeps things rolling along, and Whelihan kindly includes a list of these tunes for interested readers.
An intriguing, if overlong, story of a fun-loving guy’s quest for understanding.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66780-553-5
Page Count: 310
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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