An evocative, nostalgic coming-of-age tale and examination of bigotry.
A teenager at an East Texas summer camp in 1974 gets involved in a racial dispute in McCandless’ (Sour Lake, 2011) second novel.
The peace-and-love ’60s has devolved into the drug-addled ’70s, and 14-year-old high school student Tommy Lothrup is trying to navigate his way through a confused world. When his parents go off on a summer business trip, he’s sent to Camp Alexandra, known as “Alex,” a seedy summer camp that divides campers into two competing Native American tribes. Although many consider him a longhaired, pot-smoking hippie, Tommy quickly gains a reputation as a cerebral sort and wins friends. He meets a young African-American girl named Alyssha, who works in Alex’s kitchen, and the two become friends, although Tommy hopes that it’s more than just platonic. Unfortunately, racial prejudice is alive and well in East Texas and Tommy finds himself having to try to defuse a bad situation before something terrible happens. McCandless has crafted a multilayered novel. On the one hand, it may bring back memories of high school and holding onto one’s youth while moving relentlessly toward adulthood. On another level, the book is a searing examination of the insidious ways that racial hatred destroys people and relationships. The book also offers a nostalgic trip for anyone who ever attended summer camp and provides a clear snapshot of 1974. Readers who lived then will recognize such references as Boone’s Farm strawberry wine and the popular book Chariots of the Gods?. McCandless also provides engaging descriptions—“The stars skipped around me like living things”—and fills the book with humor: “Jack burped. I called, and raised.” Although the story takes place more than 40 years ago, it’s one that still has relevance in America today.
An evocative, nostalgic coming-of-age tale and examination of bigotry.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-26010-4
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Ninth Planet
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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