These partially interconnected short stories treat magic as metaphor rather than as reality, in a watered-down version of Block’s trademark magical realism. Rachel Sorrow, who believes she is less beautiful and more intense than her rich friends, grows into a giant after she is kissed by a boy. Berry falls for a gang member from the barrio whom she can't invite to her wealthy suburb—because he's not just poor, but a centaur. Elodie sprouts magical tattoos as she falls in love with an older man; they fade just as inexplicably when she falls out of love. A nameless boy who has experienced too much death gets seduced by a dangerous fairy who calls him “Panda Bear”and “Creamsicle.” With overwrought passages such as “smoke-scented flowers with sharp thorns that traced poetry onto your flesh” and “that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out,” these brief tales of sexual and psychological abuse, adolescence and twisted first love have plenty of mood but little depth. (Fiction. 14-15)
Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-076384-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Revisiting characters from The Cook’s Family (1998), Yep again explores personal and cultural conflicts arising between the generations in a Chinese-American family. Suddenly saddled with caring for four younger siblings after a wealthy businessman hires her widowed mother as a governess—or amah—for his daughter, Stephanie, Amy Chin is forced to miss several ballet rehearsals for Cinderella, to listen to glowing accounts of Stephanie’s sophistication, and to accept expensive clothing and other gifts from her. While gaining new insight into how Cinderella’s stepsisters must have felt, Amy’s understandable resentment is compounded by the news that Stephanie will be moving in while her father is away on a trip. Yep builds that feeling to fever pitch, then dispels it by casting Stephanie as a lonely child hurt by one parent’s death and the other’s neglect; becoming friends, Stephanie and Amy clear the air and mend some fences with their well-meaning parents in a climactic face-off. The characters, most of them familiar from previous appearances, are distinct if not particularly complex, the San Francisco setting is vividly drawn, and the issues are laid out in plain terms and tidily resolved. It’s formulaic, but not entirely superficial. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23040-8
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Masquerading as a man, a young woman sets out to find her friend’s killer in New York and London at the turn of the century; disguise proves to be simultaneously liberating and imprisoning in Lewin’s big-canvas historical novel. No one is who she or he seems to be, not the gender-bending heroine Jackie who spends most of her life as Jack so she can play baseball; not her best friend, Nance, a black performer who “passes” as white, and who dies of a stab wound in the opening pages. Cleverly structured and meticulously detailed so that every piece of information neatly clicks into the jigsaw-puzzle ending, the novel runs on two tracks. One chronicles Jackie’s past history starting with her grandmother (whose incredible life both mirrors and influences her granddaughter’s); the other details her current adventures as the avenger of her best friend, along with a surprise unveiling of her father’s murderer. After a vivid trip through 19th-century America, the novel concludes in and around the music halls of London, where Jackie’s past and present converge. The derring-do climax fails to ignite, for this is a book in which the journey surpasses the destination, but overall Lewin produces a grand adventure that readers won’t soon forget. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6225-4
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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