An imaginative fantasy that has fun weaving together folklore, medicine, and ancient curses, providing a fresh twist on a...
In Di Paolo’s debut fantasy, a family secret and a mysterious curse lead a skeptic on a whirlwind journey into Italy to discover the real truth.
Dr. Diana Valleverde is a woman of science, but her deep-seated convictions are about to be challenged. Her brother Marco, a curator at the University of Philadelphia Museum of Archaeology, is working on an exhibit about the long-lost Mi’Ki’Passa Native American tribe, whose surviving members are only now stepping into the public eye. He’s convinced the museum is haunted. Diana doesn’t believe in hauntings, but her mind starts to change when she meets Hannah, a Mi’Ki’Passa med student with unexplainable abilities. When Diana travels to Italy for a conference and brings along a mysterious box that belonged to her late grandmother, all hell breaks loose. She begins having episodes of sleep paralysis involving menacing hallucinations, she discovers that a curse was put on her as a child, and a stranger threatens her brother’s life unless Diana turns over the box. Soon after finding herself back in the Italian village where she was born, she’s surprised to discover that her medical degree may have more to do with all of this than she thought. Although there are a lot of story elements to take in, Di Paolo deftly weaves the various plot threads together, creating an enjoyable, well-crafted mystery that whisks the reader from Philadelphia to Milan to a small village in the Italian mountains, all while exploring both Italian and Native American folklore. The fantasy elements, which are subtly teased out until the end, may occur a bit abruptly for some readers’ tastes—and the idea of magical Native Americans is well-trodden—the journey makes for a fun read. Diana’s a compelling main character who strikes just the right balance between Mulder and Scully.
An imaginative fantasy that has fun weaving together folklore, medicine, and ancient curses, providing a fresh twist on a classic formula.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9905596-3-4
Page Count: 284
Publisher: SDP Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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