Excellent as both an action piece and a crime drama.
From the writer and artist of Fallout (2015) comes a graphic novel inspired by true events at a Louisiana prison during Hurricane Katrina.
It’s August 2005, and Russ is an inmate of the Orleans Parish Prison. While he’s performing housekeeping duties, guards instruct him to help board up some of the prison’s windows because Hurricane Katrina is nearing landfall. Meanwhile, at the St. Bernard Parish Juvenile Detention Center, 16-year-old Sydquan discusses the possibility of release with his family and lawyer. To leave the detention center, they tell him that he must confess to a crime he didn’t commit. Instead, Syd remains silent and does time for the actions of another kid. This leaves him among a group of other juveniles who are bussed to safety at the Orleans Parish Prison. While serving the kids food, Russ is surprised to see Syd, his son, born shortly after his own jail term began; Syd, however, wants nothing to do with his absentee father. Then, when Katrina floods the prison and it loses power, the inmates must escape their cells or drown in sewage-tainted water. An uneasy truce forms between father and son as they navigate the chaos of the prison, only to face storm-ravaged New Orleans. Writer Walker and artist Oliveira do a fantastic job of immediately establishing the friction between inmates and keepers; for example, when Russ points out that he’s just mopped the floor, a guard asks, “You say something, midnight? Come speak into the mic, if something’s on your mind.” Generally, the dialogue is just tight enough to allow Oliveira’s black-and-white illustrations to do the narrative heavy lifting. A combination of fine linework and silhouettes gives characters a remarkable range of facial expressions and hand gestures, occasionally reminiscent of artist Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets, 2014, etc.). The story’s first half highlights the mismanagement of the prison, while the second shows the plight of neighborhoods destroyed by Katrina. Russ’ soul-searching helps readers find an uplifting ending, although plenty of cursing and gun violence mark this read for older teens and adults.
Excellent as both an action piece and a crime drama.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2015
ISBN: B00ZEEJ1JI
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mastermind Comics
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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