Shamelessly sentimental, although many will fall for Hyde’s tidy, quick-going, mannerist paragraphs.
Hyde perfects the heart-string-pulling techniques of Pay It Forward (2000), this time in a story about a WWII soldier reincarnated in the body of a free-spirited 21-year-old California man who tracks down the soldier’s now elderly old buddy and best girl—to humorous, romantic effect.
“Usually when the hero dies the story is over,” Walter Crowley says in his gee-gosh manner in the first chapter. Walter is a dead WWII hero from Ocean City, New Jersey, who enlisted in 1942 with his best buddy from high school, Andrew Whittaker, and gained a posthumous Purple Heart for bravery. Except that 40 years later Walter is “stuck” in the spirit world, he tells us, harboring grudges and feeling undeserving of his Purple Heart because of the cowardice he exhibited during that moment of crisis. Walter haunts a pot-smoking, sax-playing kid—Michael Steeb—to get him to contact the original Andrew, now in his 60s and living in Albuquerque, in order to set straight the true story behind Walter’s death in Guadalcanal—and to find out how Andrew had the gumption to marry Walter’s fetching red-haired fiancée, Mary Ann. Michael Steeb learns that he carries all of Walter’s memories, and the ones from Walter’s courtship of Mary Ann four decades before induce Michael to fall in love with her all over again, causing enormous havoc within the aged and bitter Andrew and various onlookers who are horrified at the sight of a sixtysomething lady kissing a mere kid. However absurd the premise, Hyde hooks her reader through artless evocation of an earlier, innocent, patriotic era à la Our Town. “I’d like to tell you that I properly appreciated every single moment of the life I was given,” Walter says, echoing the wholesome goodness of almost everyone here.
Shamelessly sentimental, although many will fall for Hyde’s tidy, quick-going, mannerist paragraphs.Pub Date: April 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-684-86723-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Certainly not for all readers, but anyone interested in seeing William Peter Blatty’s infamous The Exorcist (1971) by way of...
The wonder of friendship proves to be stronger than the power of Christ when an ancient demon possesses a teenage girl.
Hendrix was outrageously inventive with his debut novel (Horrorstör, 2014) and continues his winning streak with a nostalgic (if blood-soaked) horror story to warm the hearts of Gen Xers. “The exorcist is dead,” Hendrix writes in the very first line of the novel, as a middle-aged divorcée named Abby Rivers reflects back on the friendship that defined her life. In flashbacks, Abby meets her best friend, Gretchen Lang, at her 10th birthday party in 1982, forever cementing their comradeship. The bulk of the novel is set in 1988, and it’s an unabashed love letter to big hair, heavy metal, and all the pop-culture trappings of the era, complete with chapter titles ripped from songs all the way from “Don’t You Forget About Me” to “And She Was.” Things go sideways when Abby, Gretchen, and two friends venture off to a cabin in the woods (as happens) to experiment with LSD. After Gretchen disappears for a night, she returns a changed girl. Hendrix walks a precipitously fine line in his portrayal, leaving the story open to doubt whether Gretchen is really possessed or has simply fallen prey to the vanities and duplicities that high school sometimes inspires. He also ferociously captures the frustrations of adolescence as Abby seeks adult help in her plight and is relentlessly dismissed by her elders. She finally finds a hero in Brother Lemon, a member of a Christian boy band, the Lemon Brothers Faith and Fitness Show, who agrees to help her. When Abby’s demon finally shows its true colors in the book’s denouement, it’s not only a spectacularly grotesque and profane depiction of exorcism, but counterintuitively a truly inspiring portrayal of the resilience of friendship.
Certainly not for all readers, but anyone interested in seeing William Peter Blatty’s infamous The Exorcist (1971) by way of Heathers shouldn’t miss it.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59474-862-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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