An exuberant, gently suspenseful coming-of-age tale with canine protagonists.
A young Labrador discovers a family and develops maturity in this debut novel, told from a dog’s point of view.
The narrator of Angel’s rollicking adventure is Puppins, a 2- to 3-year-old rescue dog who lives in Los Angeles with his human, Kristin, daughter of the Seattle veterinarian who patched him up after a near-fatal car accident. Puppins is a good-natured and caring Labrador with a disarming awareness of his own foibles, which include an overenthusiastic “inner Jack Russell” and a weakness for redheads, in this case Ruby, a gorgeous and amoral Irish setter with no patience for anything that ties her down. When Ruby invites Puppins to run away with her, he leaves the human who adores him without a backward glance until he realizes that freedom and homelessness have a lot in common. But his time on the road teaches him about love, loss, and real friendship, and he has plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his courage and wit as he tries to find his way home. Angel spins a gripping tale filled with memorable characters, such as Felicity, a nondescript little canine with a stout, affectionate heart and a damaged leg from poor breeding practices in a puppy mill, and Mariah, a wise greyhound matriarch who runs a shelter for street dogs. The plot is a page-turner, and readers will certainly cheer the triumph of the good dogs against malevolent humans and pit bulls. But the book fails somewhat in its effort to create a convincing portrait of canine society, as the dogs think and act in human terms. When Puppins ruminates on the roofline of an American Craftsman-style house, “The idea was that if a devil landed on your roof, it would slide down and fly right off, like those ski jumpers I’ve seen on TV,” the narrative supposes that canines watch TV, understand ski jumping, and study architecture, the last two rather unlikely dog interests. The author’s use of language is inconsistent as well. Dogs understand human speech perfectly but cannot respond or apparently grasp that people don’t like their possessions chewed up. Canines, cats, and even mice all speak English to one another, but parakeets converse in Spanish. Despite this imperfect imagining of an alternate animal universe, the story is charming, and the ending is a warm and satisfying plea for kindness and compassion.
An exuberant, gently suspenseful coming-of-age tale with canine protagonists.Pub Date: April 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9996952-0-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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