A supernatural tale with a strong, engaging protagonist.
In Rosengard’s new-adult debut novel, a college student searches for the person responsible for her best friend’s death—with a little help from a familiar ghost.
Nineteen-year-old Callie McCayter escapes a gloomy life in Houston by attending Astoria College in the Pacific Northwest. She’s rooming with childhood friend Izzy Miller, whose parents took Callie in when it became clear her alcoholic father, a cop, was abusing her. But tragedy strikes during the friends’ sophomore year: Izzy is killed by a car in a hit-and-run as she’s walking home from a party in the middle of the night. Callie’s resultant despair causes her to miss numerous classes, and she may lose her scholarships, as a result. Then, one day, she sees the ghost of Izzy in their room. Her late friend doesn’t speak but instead uses lipstick to write a message on a mirror: “HELP ME.” Callie becomes determined to solve the mystery of what happened the night of Izzy’s death; she not only wants to find out the identity of the unknown driver, but also who’s to blame for the fact that Izzy was walking alone on a dark road. This entails interrogating four students who showed up to the party with Izzy and who apparently didn’t care that she was uncharacteristically drunk. Meanwhile, Callie, who normally abstains from dating, becomes attracted to two very different guys—seemingly meek Colin Turner and 20-something campus security officer Jay Houghten, an ex-Marine. Soon, she starts to experience Izzy’s memories, and, as a result, she starts to uncover quite a few secrets. Rosengard thoroughly develops her paranormal mystery plot, but the heart of the tale is Callie’s growing fortitude. She’s initially despondent after Izzy dies, but she eventually becomes determined to pinpoint every important detail of that fateful night. As the story progresses, readers learn of Callie’s other strengths, including her training in self-defense, stemming from her experiences with her dad. Much of the narrative centers on the aforementioned romantic triangle; both of the young men are enticing but flawed, making Callie’s choice understandably difficult. But they also have ties to the greater mystery—and they may be withholding important information from Callie about the party. Izzy’s ghostly appearances are sporadic and cryptic enough that Callie is left to unravel the whodunit mostly on her own. However, Callie’s memory-visions of Izzy’s experiences add a startling element, as they reveal a less-than-pleasant side of her friend. In one memory, for example, Izzy is irate when her mother gives Callie special attention. The mystery contains a handful of other shocking twists, although many readers will likely see a few of them coming. However, the author’s grasp of Callie’s first-person voice is sensational: The teenager endlessly debates with herself and harps on her own shortcomings, such as her tendency to distance herself from potential friends and romantic interests. She does acknowledge and work on overcoming her weaknesses, though—and readers will definitely see her virtues even when she doesn’t.
A supernatural tale with a strong, engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5380-9012-1
Page Count: 510
Publisher: Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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