A charming story of family life and romance that puts a unique twist on a midlife crisis.
From debut novelist Krantz comes an adult coming-of-age story about a woman trying to become the person she wants to be.
The only creative outlet that 38-year-old Lenni Serrano has is her journal, in which she writes that she feels “trapped.” Once a passionate philosophy student and clay sculptor, she’s now bored with her routine life in Philadelphia as a hospital administrator; she’s also a wife to Aaron, whom she met in high school, and they have two children, now teenagers. A chance meeting with a highly intelligent biochemist named Carl in a finance class leads to Lenni getting a new job, where she also meets Carl’s kind co-worker Richard. She then asks herself, “Was it her marriage that was stale—or was it her life?” Krantz thankfully keeps the resulting love triangle—or square—away from soap opera territory by painting the different men as catalysts for Lenni’s self-actualization. The scenes with Lenni’s children offer moments of humor, although her daughter Emily too often acts like a stereotypical angry teen. The story often skips forward in time, which has the effect of keeping the plot from becoming too melodramatic. Readers may guess the late plot twist, but Krantz’s focus on her characters’ emotions gives the story an authentic feel, and the ending is surprising and satisfying. Although the author’s use of journal entries to showcase her character’s inner nature sometimes feels contrived, Lenni’s charm still comes through: “You’re not living up to your own expectations. Ha! My alter ego speaking. Well, Ms. Alter-ego, life can get pretty dull if you always follow the rules.” Lenni’s love of both passion and comfort is relatable, as is the idea that shelving one’s dreams can come back to haunt you. Krantz, who, like Lenni, has a background in hospital administration, gives readers a protagonist to root for—one who finds herself torn between the life she’s created and the one she always thought she’d have.
A charming story of family life and romance that puts a unique twist on a midlife crisis.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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