An intriguing novel about how emotional problems can serve as opportunities for growth.
A harrowing sequel to the acclaimed The Kindness of Ravens (2012) that features a cast of broken, despairing characters.
Three years after the events of the previous novel, antihero Daren has recovered from substance abuse and addiction and is now ready to save others. Through his work as a counselor at the Santa Crisca Residential Institute for the Developmentally Disabled, he meets devastating victims of abuse and bad luck. His unit is comprised of six teenagers who share an array of emotional disabilities. It’s a troubling caseload, but Daren calls upon his own losses and insights and manages to navigate their problems effectively. However, as he gets to know the staff members at the institute—Heather, Alex, Janet, Rebecca and Casey—their struggles soon consume him. As their compulsions, secrets and complications escalate, and Daren pursues his own flirtation with Casey, he also forms a bond with the sharp-tongued Tara Martinez (described as “a raven, lost, wanton, a shaggy aristocrat of a lonely ward”), who’s a victim of intense neglect and abuse. Her at-risk behavior has her headed toward a desperate future unless Daren and the staff can intervene: “What I know is, if we don’t save her, nobody will,” Daren says. His determination to keep Tara safe blurs together with his own needs; when he helps others, he helps himself. Bardessono has a sharp eye for detail and characterization, and he offers an insightful, elegant tale of human behavior and suffering. Through his depiction of Daren’s sensitivity and self-awareness, the story emerges as a multilayered commentary on how society fails its derelicts as they struggle to achieve their own actualization. Daren’s patients and friends provide a colorful backdrop to his tale of redemption.
An intriguing novel about how emotional problems can serve as opportunities for growth.Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493645831
Page Count: 338
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
