by Corwyn Alvarez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2012
A dark, whimsical adventure that dog-lovers will enjoy.
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The life of a young, tormented dog-walker is changed by the people and pets he encounters.
Benny has always felt that he was different than the other residents of his small town of Mayfield, Md.; however, he feels a close connection to the loving, loyal canine members of the community. Becoming a dog-walker was just as much a natural choice for dog-loving Benny as it was a necessity for him as a high-school dropout who has been walked over by the people he has known throughout his young life. Alvarez entices readers to see the town of Mayfield through the eyes of Benny as he creates a kinship with the dogs he walks for his neighbors and takes uncharted paths, twists and turns that give way to new adventures. Through Benny, a lone wolf whose friends and family members cannot compare to his love interest, Laura—the forlorn, anorexic prostitute with the “Husky blue eyes”—Alvarez appealingly flaunts the charm, sincerity and patriotism that exists in the heart of the young man. Although Benny displays a subconscious loyalty to his new crush, there are disturbing problems that arise with courting her. Along with his sharply crafted witticisms and creative analogies, Alvarez creates compelling parallels between the relationships that Benny forges with the people of Mayfield and the ones he forges with the dogs that he walks for them. As Benny explores himself through the challenges he faces in each chapter, he meets new members of his small-town community, and, as he grows, he is increasingly able to lend a helping hand. There's Vanessa, the bold, resourceful owner of recalcitrant Ruckus; Gale, the buxom, beautiful owner of Remy and Shadow and girlfriend of a disrespectful brute; Larry, a war veteran with a wild imagination; and Mrs. McKenzie, the owner of toy poodles, with whom she enjoys drinking beer. And then there's Benny's friend Zach, the sneaky drug dealer, who introduces Benny to Laura. Alvarez expertly uses dark humor to mold Benny into an engaging character who works to save his employers and friends.
A dark, whimsical adventure that dog-lovers will enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466319752
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bell Bridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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