A high school tale that handles familiar issues in YA literature with sensitivity and humor.
In this debut YA novel, a troubled teenager struggles to fit in with the popular crowd, putting her well-being in danger.
Wren Newmann, 16, is painfully self-conscious, especially about her body, which she considers enormous at size 12. She also feels abandoned and lonely staying at her Granny’s farmhouse while her parents are divorcing. On the positive side, she sees more of Jay Dressler, the boy she’s had an impossible crush on for three years, because he does chores around the vineyard. Self-confident, good-looking, and always at the center of a crowd, Jay thrills Wren with attention and flirting, making her even more anxious and weight-conscious. She determines to slim down by purging and ignores some red flags, like Jay’s rudeness to Panayis, a Greek boy who also works at the vineyard. Panayis is attractive and likes Wren, but she has eyes only for Jay. Although she loves books and Jay is more a Future Farmer of America type, Wren tries her best to become the skinny, fashionably dressed, party-going girl he usually dates. In the process, she loses her best friend and becomes dangerously undernourished. After Jay pressures her into unwanted sex, Wren must confront uncomfortable truths, repair her friendships and health, and start the journey toward self-acceptance. In her book, Maroulis skillfully captures the voice and sensibility of a socially anxious teenage girl. Wren is wryly amusing about her problems, as when she imagines Jay thinking: “The awkward is strong in this one.” Her weight obsession can seem overdone (sitting on a bench, she’ll lift her heels to avoid thigh spread), but she’s a reflection of today’s constant barrage of be-thin propaganda. The author handles the date rape episode with sensitivity. Jay takes advantage of Wren’s inexperience, confusion, and soft-spoken, single “no” but genuinely doesn’t think he’s committed rape. Wren’s supporters, though, emphasize that even a single no is enough—an important message for the novel’s audience. Wisely, Wren’s purging isn’t overdescribed, which helps avoid triggering readers with similar problems.
A high school tale that handles familiar issues in YA literature with sensitivity and humor.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-648-34725-5
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Lakewater Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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