by Chukwudi Eze ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A protagonist of conviction braves discrimination and a potentially dangerous corporation.
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A New Yorker of mixed heritage believes his destiny lies in his African ancestral homeland in this dramatic novel.
In 1993, 17-year-old Emmanuel’s father, Uchechi, tells him that his destiny awaits him in the African kingdom of Umuati. Uchechi believes his American son will somehow need to help Umuati battle injustice and oppression and that failure to do so will curse Emmanuel. A decade later, Emmanuel resides in Manhattan with a Ph.D. from Columbia Law School but still hasn’t visited Umuati. He falls for Rebecca Levitt, who’s vice president at her father Reuben’s brokerage firm, Peak Management Group. Emmanuel even takes a job at the firm to get close to Rebecca. But Reuben disapproves of their inevitable romance, primarily because Emmanuel, who’s biracial, isn’t Jewish like the Levitts. Emmanuel fights for the chance to marry Rebecca and, soon after, finds a way he can assist Umuati. An oil-field explosion there has resulted in fatalities and a devastating oil spill. Emmanuel calls Umuati’s regent and offers, pro bono, to file a lawsuit against the company responsible, Sooli Oil. This entails finally traveling to Umuati, where Emmanuel surprisingly faces some resistance. After the evidence he has gathered inexplicably vanishes, Emmanuel and others learn there may be a spy working for Sooli, which ultimately leads to murder and a kidnapping. But it’s the opportunity to move to Umuati that presents Emmanuel with his greatest challenge, as Rebecca’s refusal to leave her U.S. home may threaten their prospective future together. Emmanuel’s convincing motivations propel Eze’s (Leadership Stories of Mother Hen, 2012, etc.) engrossing, character-driven story. For example, destiny plays a large role in the protagonist’s decisions, be it pursuing Rebecca or coming to the aid of Umuati. This stems from Uchechi’s forecasting his son’s fate and possible curse; just days later, Emmanuel tragically lost both parents in a storm-related boating accident. Similarly, he has thrived academically in spite of the discrimination he faced from school bullies calling him half-breed or “merboy” (half fish, half boy). Emmanuel later overcomes adversaries in Umuati who see him as an outcast. He has an Umuati name, Nkemefuna, and knows the language but is unfamiliar with the culture. The first third of the novel centers on Emmanuel’s growing relationship with Rebecca. It’s a rewarding subplot, though some of his behavior is more obsessive than romantic. For instance, when she seems reluctant to further the relationship, Emmanuel asks his cousin Anna to befriend Rebecca. He’s certain that the friendship will help him win Rebecca. Regardless, his sweet words to her are often charming: “If I ever live this life again, let it always be with you, my love.” The plot shift to the lawsuit adds tension and suspense. Individuals opposing the suit put Emmanuel in unmistakable peril, but the courtroom scenes are intense as well, as the protagonist fights a multibillion-dollar company. Female characters are strong, particularly Anna, who, in a flashback, doesn’t hesitate to warn a sexist, racist biker against calling her a “bitch.”
A protagonist of conviction braves discrimination and a potentially dangerous corporation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: SEVHAGE
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
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
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