Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless...
A white boy afraid to leave his family meets a Romani girl who wants a brief romantic encounter in the Nevada desert.
Lala’s family sells used cars in Portland, Ore., but is spending a week in the blistering heat of Nevada in order to fleece the gazhè who come to Burning Man; surely the hippies will pay generously to have their fortunes told. Ben lives in a company town that’s dying along with its shuttering gypsum mine. In alternating chapters, Lala and Ben tell of their coming-of-age crises: Lala fears the stifling sameness of her coming arranged marriage, while Ben is ashamed of the track scholarship that will provide his escape to college while his family and neighbors leave their soon-to-be ghost town for unemployment. Lala, for Ben, is his brief summer dalliance, the manic pixie dream girl who distracts him from his fears. Ben, for Lala, is the trigger she uses to take control of and redirect her life. Lala’s a powerful and independent young woman, though she also exhibits too many romantic gypsy tropes, with her “mess of dark curls...wild” and cascading over an hourglass figure, speaking in contraction-free sentences that entice Ben with their foreignness.
Lyrical and inspirational, though Lala’s inexplicably outsider view of her own culture, complete with sneers at harmless cultural practices, is a deeply jarring note . (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-74334-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Immersive and mesmerizing.
A girl matchmaker in 13th-century southern France meets a mystic on the run from the Inquisition.
A generation after the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade, the elders are still broken by memories of entire towns put to the sword, but the younger folk, such as Botille and her sisters, focus on the present. After a childhood on the run, the sisters seek stability in poverty-stricken Bajas: brewing ale, telling fortunes, and helping their neighbors. Bajas is depicted through a scattering of third- and first-person viewpoints (but primarily Botille's) as a town where all look out for one other as a matter of course, where goodness is found in prostitutes, fishermen, hustlers, and drunks. Bajas' generosity is challenged when Botille discovers Dolssa, an injured, spirit-shattered girl on the run. Dolssa's a convicted heretic for speaking publicly of her intimate relationship with "her beloved...Senhor Jhesus." She trails miracles like bread crumbs, from a never-emptying ale jug to repeated uncanny cures. The villagers venerate her, but the arrival of the Inquisition—in a world where branding and burnings are mild punishments compared to recent history—puts their goodness to the test. The slow build reveals Botille as a compelling, admirable young woman in a gorgeously built world that accepts miracles without question. The medieval Languedoc countryside is so believably drawn there's no need for the too-frequent italicized interjections in Old Provençal that pepper the narrative.
Immersive and mesmerizing. (character list, historical note, glossary, bibliography) (Historical fantasy. 14-17)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-46992-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
McGinty’s debut is a bit of a shaggy dog story: frequently meandering and patience-trying but bighearted and generous, too.
A teen realizes there’s more to life than augmented reality.
In Aaron O’Faolain’s near-future world, birds are dying en masse, American currency is being phased out in favor of digital-only funds, and everyone wants to have FUN(R). Aaron ditches his boarding school and uses his tuition money to pursue a life of adventure, complete with a microchip and lenses for the Fully Ubiquitous Neuralnet. Once he starts having FUN(R), it mediates all of his experiences in ways that are both (predictably) fun and (equally predictably) intrusive. Aaron’s realization that it’s tiresome to be asked to rate everything from consumer products to fellow humans coincides with his trip home to reckon with his grandfather’s suicide. Having inherited everything, he decides to seek the treasure that might be buried on the property so he can pay back his father and sister. He also pursues fairly typical teen activities such as romance, imbibing questionable substances, scrapping with his responsible older sister, and helping an elderly neighbor. Aaron’s account is littered with trademarked names, and each chapter ends with “yay!” and “boo!” rating buttons—just a few of the amusing details it feels that McGinty couldn’t bear to cut; the result is a book that starts strong but has trouble maintaining its pitch. Aaron is white, but his world is convincingly diverse.
McGinty’s debut is a bit of a shaggy dog story: frequently meandering and patience-trying but bighearted and generous, too. (Adventure. 14-16)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-2211-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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