An unevenly executed adventure story that celebrates the value of literature and unlikely friendship.
In Carrillo’s (The Improbable Rise of Paco Jones, 2016, etc.) YA novel, a teenager embarks upon a quest for vengeance but later learns important lessons from an unlikely teacher.
Nia, a 14-year-old Bulgarian-American teenager, runs away from her posh home in Sofia, Bulgaria, and boards a train to Berlin. Her mission is to make it to the German capital in time to follow through on a plan to get revenge on her two-timing ex-boyfriend, who’s staying in a hotel in the city. After reading The Count of Monte Cristo, Nia was inspired to brazenly seek out poetic justice of a similar variety in her love life. On the train to Berlin, she meets Kurt Chavez, an 89-year-old retired American schoolteacher who’s traveling to Budapest to execute a darkly romantic plan of his own. When someone attempts to rape Nia on the train, Kurt comes to her rescue, which leads to the pair becoming fugitives and unlikely travel companions. As the two help each other dodge arrest, the significance of their unlikely companionship materializes. Nia, the lonely daughter of wealthy parents going through a nasty divorce, finds mentorship in Kurt, while he, a lonely widower, reconnects to his appetite for adventure through Nia. But this relationship, while sweet, lacks authentic chemistry. Carrillo seems to use the dramatic circumstances of Nia and Kurt’s meeting to simply assume a bond between them instead of cultivating one. Further, Nia and Kurt seem like caricatures of adolescence and old age rather than fully developed characters. Kurt, for example, often provides comic relief with jokes about his age, calling himself an “old fart”; Nia, meanwhile, displays a clichéd understanding of elderly people: “ his old man-isms were hilarious. Who says dadgummit, oh dear, and tarnation?” That said, the pace is fast, and there’s rarely a dull moment; there’s juicy suspense in every subplot and plenty of close calls for the central duo.
An unevenly executed adventure story that celebrates the value of literature and unlikely friendship.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5489-7220-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: CSP Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blackwood goes from Elizabethan England (Shakespeare Stealer, not reviewed, 1998) to a Depression-Era Ozarks setting for this poker-faced tale of a self-reliant but naive teenager. Although he and his mother are dirt poor and he doesn’t remember his father, Thad is an optimist; he has a girl, a loyal bluetick hound, and a good if risky source of income, selling corn liquor for Dayman, a sour, one-armed recluse with a hidden still. He begins to get a glimmer of other lives and possibilities when Harlan James comes to town, claiming to be a land scout for tobacco growers. Harlan is well-dressed, a free spender, and free with his time, too; he allows Thad to use his fancy tackle to land a huge catfish, teaches him how to use a rifle, and even loans him clothes for a date. Blackwood knits characters together with threads of “moonshine”—not liquor, but a steady diet of stories, jokes, yarns, and outright lies’so that the story becomes a study in layers and varieties of honesty. Thad’s feeling of betrayal is sharp but brief when he finds out that Harlan is a revenue agent, stalking Dayman’s still, which literally explodes in his face. Blackwood drops plenty of hints that both Harlan and Dayman are more than they seem, so alert readers are always ahead of Thad, which adds drama; the twin revelations that Dayman is Thad’s father and that Harlan’s friendliness wasn’t all moonshine close this backwoods bildungsroman on a high note. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7614-5056-4
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
The sudden death of her twin leaves a teenager struggling with grief and her fragile sense of self in this absorbing, inwardly focused import from Sweden, part fiction, part memoir. So close are the sisters that after Cilla is killed by a motorist Tina can still hear her voice, still see her just by looking in a mirror, still hold conversations; she even finds herself taking on some of Cilla’s character traits, seeking an inner balance that she has lost. Able to describe her experiences only by switching back and forth between third person and first, Tina observes the different ways those around her grieve, and finds temporary solace in many places: reading and writing poetry, performing on stage, playing her violin, trying a brief but intense fling at summer camp, even talking to a perceptive psychologist—but unlike many such stories, there is never any sense here that the authors are running through a catalog of coping strategies, or offering trite platitudes. A year later, Tina discovers that, in forming new friendships and moving on in life, she has passed the worst of her pain, and found ways to distance herself from Cilla without losing her completely. In a smooth, natural-sounding translation, this is a thoughtful, complex reminiscence. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 23, 1999
ISBN: 91-29-63935-2
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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