A sentimental yet heartwarming tale of transgression and redemption.
In a heavily segregated community of 1959 Texas, a 12-year-old white boy befriends a black boy. Only trouble can follow.
It all begins when Pete Solomon decides to go fishing but finds an injured dog instead. Even though no one else wants anything to do with the possibly wild, probably dangerous, half-wolf hybrid lying at the side of the road, Pete can’t walk away. A victim of abuse at the hands of his father, Pete instinctively understands that he’ll have to gain the dog’s trust before he can load him onto his wagon and take him to the only person in town who might be willing to help: Dr. Lucy. A licensed physician, Lucy lives on the edge of town, treating humans as needed to support her ever expanding menagerie of rescued animals. She keeps her head down and her heart guarded behind a gruff facade; divorce and grief have left her vulnerable. On his way to Dr. Lucy’s house, Pete meets Justin Bell, a boy new to town, and the two become best friends though Pete is white and Justin is black. Soon enough, both Pete and Justin face violent repercussions for breaking the color barrier. And after meeting Justin’s father, Calvin, Lucy, too, falls into a socially dangerous love. Bestselling author of Pay it Forward (1999), Hyde (Leaving Blythe River, 2016, etc.) captures the determination of Justin and Pete’s friendship as well as the wistfulness of Pete’s love for the injured dog. Yet the love between Lucy and Calvin is rushed, underdeveloped, and difficult to believe. As the Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia approaches, Hyde fragments their love affair into sections set years apart, which certainly emphasizes the patience required of true love but unfortunately dilutes the intensity of the relationship.
A sentimental yet heartwarming tale of transgression and redemption.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5039-3944-8
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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