A strange and fluffy confection with a thought-provoking core.
Working for a newspaper changes a misfit girl’s life in many ways in Giroux’s novel.
Pennacook, Massachusetts, is a town beset by constant floods in which menacing wild boars roam the streets/canals, people ride balance-bikes or pedal boats, and grocery store robots have banded together in the woods. Readers meet the novel’s protagonist, Wendy Zhou, during her difficult middle school years—Wendy’s father has recently died, no one in Pennacook can pronounce her last name, and her coming out as gay during a school dance goes disastrously wrong when her crush rejects and insults her. Writing for the Pennacook Beat newspaper gives Wendy a purpose, and she and the other kid reporters in her school-sponsored program uncover a case of corruption revealing the reasons for the floods and hordes of feral pigs—and the truth behind an idealistic-sounding scheme to cover the town with a giant dome. Interspersed with teen Wendy’s exploits are depictions of Wendy in the year 2032 as she nears college graduation. Both Wendy and her Pennacook Beat editor, Graham Bundt, are flawed characters, but the author makes them likable by showing their growth. Graham has a drinking problem and allows the newspaper to be co-opted for propaganda, but he’s worth redemption—he inspires kids to write and cares about the town he inhabits. Wendy can be unkind to her mom; she’s also an unreliable narrator, revealing late in the story that she has lied about some of her personal details. Still, the reader is on Wendy’s side when she learns to care deeply for someone and discovers her own strength. Though the story is frothy, Giroux embeds many serious themes in the narrative, including self-acceptance, suicide, sexuality, and racism. The book also convincingly explores the fragility of democracy, which is threatened in Pennacook. As Graham observes, quoting his hero, John Adams, “There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
A strange and fluffy confection with a thought-provoking core.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781734224047
Page Count: 306
Publisher: New Salem Books
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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