A powerfully emotional exploration of disability and adolescence.
A disabled 17-year-old girl must confront her feelings toward her mother while also grappling with all the challenges of being a teenager in Minaki’s (Zoe’s Extraordinary Holiday Adventures, 2007) YA novel.
Naomi was born with cerebral palsy, and although multiple therapies have improved her motor functions, she requires a wheelchair or a walker to get through her day. Her twin sister, Mary, died shortly after their birth, and her mother was left emotionally paralyzed by grief. One day, Naomi’s mom took her older sister, Jo, and walked out, leaving Naomi with her father and younger brother. Despite this trauma, Naomi, now a teenager, succeeds in school, spending time horseback riding and developing close relationships with Lynne, a girl overcoming a learning disability; and Eva, a young woman battling alcoholism. When Naomi’s mother and sister suddenly reappear, she expects a terse dinner with them and nothing more. Then, without warning, Jo announces that she plans to move back in with Naomi and her father. Naomi does her best to navigate the new, tense family dynamic; she also finds herself beginning a romantic relationship with a young man named Matt, although she’s not sure that he fully accepts her disability. Complicating things further is Naomi’s friendship with Curtis, a young man who wants to escape an abusive legacy. Also, her mother is harboring a potentially shattering secret. Canadian author Minaki uses her educational background—she holds a master’s in education, specializing in disability studies—to paint an honest, sometimes-revelatory view of life with disability. Naomi spends much of the novel reflecting on her relationship to her cerebral palsy in the first person, relating it to such topics as love, independence, and her Christian faith. Minaki also allows other characters, including Naomi’s loved ones, to narrate brief segments with similarly heartfelt contemplation. The slow pacing and well-developed cast conjure up a fictional world that’s sure to engage readers.
A powerfully emotional exploration of disability and adolescence.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-1686-3
Page Count: 402
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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