A creative but cluttered book that swarms with twists and turns but may lose readers in gratuitous detail.
Bronzy (761.207, 2017) delivers a whimsical thriller about a refugee’s struggles in America.
Haway Halabi is a displaced person from the Middle East who’s been relocated to Boise, Idaho. Although she speaks good English and is well-liked by those around her, she longs for her hometown of Aleppo. Of course, with Syria still at war, a return to Aleppo is impossible, so Haway keeps busy the best that she can, attending college classes and designing headscarves. Luckily, she’s aided by her pleasant, artist uncle Dahan. But when he dies suddenly, ostensibly of a heart attack, she thinks the circumstances are suspicious. Why was Dahan visited by two men shortly before he died? Readers find out that the pair, Otto Hahn and Pierro Conti, work for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. They have an unofficial mission to track down religious artifacts and documents, and when they seize such items, they tend to quietly dispose of those who possess them. But while they may have killed Dahan, they didn’t manage to find an ancient chest he owned. What does the chest contain, and how far will the men go to find it? This conflict is at the heart of the swirling tale, though it’s hardly the whole story. Additional characters include, but are not limited to, a one-legged military veteran, an African-American New York City rabbi, and an investigator from a task force called AFRICA (named after the American Freedom to Report and Implicate or Collusion Act). Despite the abundance of players and geographic locations, however, the narrative is never difficult to follow, even when Bronzy takes readers to strange, surprising places. The multitude of back stories, though, can be overwhelming at times. The lengthy, detailed story behind the veteran’s loss of his leg, for example, isn’t particularly thrilling, nor is it pertinent to the greater struggle. Readers wind up learning a lot about relatively minor characters, but it adds more to the page count than to the overall excitement.
A creative but cluttered book that swarms with twists and turns but may lose readers in gratuitous detail.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9992750-1-6
Page Count: 364
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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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