A powerful, original examination of the nature of memory and the effects of childhood abuse that’s framed as a suspense tale.
In this debut YA sci-fi thriller, a teenager helps to heal victims of sexual abuse while trying to uncover the shocking secrets of his own mysterious past.
Sixteen-year-old Hunter remembers nothing about his life before he finds himself attending high school in Alaska. He has been told that his mother and younger brother died in an automobile accident four years previously, but he has no memory of that event, the bike mishap that is said to have caused the scars all over his body, or his supposed home schooling, which has left him uncertain about how to relate to his peers. His father, Joe, is no help, responding to his questions by saying only, “Leave the past alone.” But the past will not leave Hunter alone, as his mind is invaded by visions full of frightening and shameful sexuality—other people’s stories that seem to demand that he write them down even though he does not understand their origin. In school, he meets Jasmine “Jazz” Williams, a tough and vulnerable misfit with her own alarming secrets. Together, Hunter and Jazz investigate the roots and effects of his tales, discovering that they have an almost miraculous ability to erase the wounds of the past. While Jazz and Hunter have finally found someone to whom they can show their scars, Joe is terrified by the damage that may be caused if his son’s painful memories are finally unleashed. Skipstone’s narrative treads the edge between realistic YA literature and sci-fi grounded in computer logic, in which memories can be stored and retrieved externally. While the concept of Hunter’s access to memories that are not his own may be fanciful, the author’s portrayal of the lasting devastation caused by sexual abuse is deeply felt and convincing. Skipstone’s foreword warns that the graphic scenes of sexual violence may be triggering to some young readers but argues that the victims of such crimes deserve to have their stories told. As Hunter says, “One reason this stuff keeps happening is because it’s kept secret.”
A powerful, original examination of the nature of memory and the effects of childhood abuse that’s framed as a suspense tale.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Skipstone Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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