An intricate backpacking tale rife with secrets and hidden depths.
A novel melds wilderness adventures and family history.
Tom Olsen’s ex-wife showing up at his doorstep unannounced is certainly unpleasant, especially on the eve of a backpacking trip to visit his grandfather’s grave, deep in the Olympic Peninsula. But her arriving in the middle of a storm with a granddaughter, Sarah, he never knew he had is something else entirely. An angry, sullen teenager with an instinctual hatred for “the total boonies,” Sarah seems to be more than Tom can handle, even before friend William “Walleye” and his daughter, Myra, suggest that they go ahead with the trek and bring Sarah along. Once on the trail, Tom can’t help but get caught up in the memories Sarah evokes of his marriage and his now-dead daughter—the teen’s mother—Becky. Sarah even vanishes for a time and reappears, coming back with a strange apparent connection to the land and a head full of stories beyond what any of them are familiar with. In a place rife with history, spirits, and the cultural memories of the local Native American tribes, the hikers have more to discover than any of them realize. What at first seems to be a rote fish-out-of-water story quickly morphs into something more as Sheldon’s (Fat Chance, 2006, etc.) novel takes shape. In some hands, the tale’s mix of spirituality and the harsh realities of life in rural and Native American communities would be awkward or off-putting to read, but this book carries the blend well, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. The complex histories and motivations of each character only add to the atmosphere, allowing the reader to see and empathize with their many-layered feelings. The prose is overly minimalist at times, but once readers get into the story, they should appreciate the bare-bones style: “After two weeks on the ship, it was heaven to sink into the brine, lean back, look at the sky above. Across lounged a couple, all over each other. They were both large. Three younger women were in the smaller pools, laughing.”
An intricate backpacking tale rife with secrets and hidden depths.Pub Date: March 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9970600-5-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Iron Twine Press
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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