Melodrama well complemented by fantastical notions; a springboard for what could be a first-rate series.
A woman discovers that she isn’t merely dreaming of the past, but is actually traveling through time in her sleep in this debut fantasy.
Thirty-five-year-old Erin Brusca’s dream of her young father from 1968—when she was born— is almost tangible. If she believes the stranger who approaches her the next day, Erin’s a dream traveler. The woman, Anna, tells Erin of the Dream Travelers Council, which polices dream travel to prevent changes in the past from altering the present. There are also the reckless Terrents, with the ability to hijack a dream traveler and traverse time on their own. Erin’s trained by Sienna Goodman, a Garan, the rare breed of dream traveler who can summon other travelers into their dreams and even travel to the future. The council eventually gives Erin her first assignment, keeping an eye out for trespassing Terrents. But her real-world life, with husband, Dante, and teenage stepdaughter, Sandra, will soon clash with her newfound capability in an unexpected way. This brisk novel equally blends fantasy and Erin’s real-life drama. Erin, for example, learns she’s pregnant, works on the Kaso Pharmaceuticals’ clinical trial for a drug to cure pancreatic cancer, and deals with the perpetually moody Sandra. These sometimes carry over to the dream travels, like when the council decides whether or not an expectant mother should travel, fearing that the unborn child will be adversely affected. The dramatic scenes tend to be more engaging than the traveling, as Sienna’s training consists primarily of slide presentations and information about the council, which sidelines Erin for at least some of her pregnancy. Breheny does, however, introduce a number of curious elements, including the peculiar, intoxicating effect that cinnamon (either taste or smell) has on dream travelers. There’s likewise Erin’s indisputable attraction to fellow dream traveler Quinn Walsh, addressing the dilemma of her potential guilt—Quinn, after all, is only in her dreams. The story builds to a momentous climax that unfortunately happens very late in the book. But it’s a near-perfect setup for a sequel that will unquestionably leave readers restless in anticipation.
Melodrama well complemented by fantastical notions; a springboard for what could be a first-rate series.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-36359-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Breheny Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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