One respects this earnest tale's passion and indignation, but little else. Johnny is a posturing monster, Laokolé a stoical...
The native Congolese author, now Massachusetts-based, writes of civil war and its attendant atrocities.
Unlike Dongala's subtly woven The Fire of Origins (2002) and Little Boys Come from the Stars (2001), his latest offers a simplistic contrast of innocence with rampant amorality. It’s set in an unnamed West African nation where forces representing the Mayi-Dogo and Dogo-Mayi tribes struggle to annihilate one another, aided by mercenaries from various countries, though the fighting is entrusted largely to laxly trained “militias” whose main “political” objectives are rape and looting. One such force, the Mata-Matas (aka “Roaring Tigers”), flounders under the leadership of strutting thug General Giap, who has inexplicably delegated major responsibilities to the eponymous Johnny, a teenaged brute who assumes several resonant noms de guerre before settling on “Mad Dog,” and who narrates his murderous misadventures in vainglorious accents, all the while assuring us that he’s an unparalleled intellectual, heroic freedom fighter and sexual athlete. Mad Dog’s narrative is juxtaposed with that of Laokolé, a valiant 16-year-old refugee who flees the carnage with her multiple amputee “Mama” and younger brother Fofo. She (a would-be engineer) is the “intellectual” that Johnny claims to be—and it becomes apparent that Dongala is setting the two on a collision course, as Laokolé finds temporary sanctuary in a U.N. embassy building, loses all her loved ones and finally reaches an embattled village, where (in a painfully unconvincing climactic scene) she and Mad Dog face off, lethal violence ensues and, as their country smolders, the stars overhead wheel silently and indifferently in their courses.
One respects this earnest tale's passion and indignation, but little else. Johnny is a posturing monster, Laokolé a stoical saint, and every action and thought of each is reduced to melodramatic cliché. The result is an all-too-credible horror story, but not a good novel.Pub Date: May 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-17995-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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