Fans of magical realism à la Alice Hoffman will feel at home with this story.
Debut novelist Davis spins a time-travel story that features an unstoppable young heroine.
Charlotte, a Toronto fifth-grader, is a girl who dominates everyone around her by force of her determined imagination. She’s being raised by her grandfather Leo after suffering a childhood injury and the deaths of her parents, and he keeps a light hand on the reins of the stubborn but fragile girl. Her best friend is Henry, and one day, the two are hiding in the forbidden tower room of Leo’s house when his friend Gwendolyn comes to call. They hear her describe a missing brooch, carved with an image of a tree from Welsh legend, and then they’re suddenly whisked from their hiding place to 1939 Toronto. The elderly Gwendolyn is now Charlotte’s age—a snooty girl who’s splendidly equal to Charlotte in bossiness and quite uninterested in her unexpected guests. The children soon discover the adult Leo working in the family’s kitchen. It turns out that he’s time traveled before, and he tells Charlotte that she must accomplish a mission here in the past. She isn’t thrilled that her quest involves the unlikable Gwendolyn, but she takes to the adventure with aplomb. Henry also flourishes, finding boyhood in the 1930s much more congenial than its 1990s version. Charlotte and Henry aren’t always convincingly childlike, particularly in the book’s quirkier moments, but they effectively carry the story. Charlotte’s boldness and Henry’s irritated devotion will make young readers grin. The period history is detailed and intriguing, as well, and includes ugly glimpses of anti-Semitism half a world away from the coming war in Europe. The story of the brooch ties lightly into past world events as well as those of Charlotte and Henry’s own decade. A few plot threads remain unresolved, particularly regarding Charlotte’s rather vague back story and a subplot about a royal visit. Overall, however, Davis is a very engaging storyteller, and Charlotte is a wonderful creation.
Fans of magical realism à la Alice Hoffman will feel at home with this story.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6633-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
