A serious but overwritten flood fable.
A debut novella tells the story of a gifted orphan attempting to survive a harsh world.
India, 1769. Ravi, 14, lives with his grandparents in the small village of Panchali. He is a cloud dancer who, via his preternatural sensitivity (or imagination), is able to see incredible paintings in the clouds. “Clouds tell stories, in shapes and designs and images,” says Bali, the village elder and mystic, “of things that happened in the past, and things that will happen in future days.” When Ravi sees a bank of dark clouds obscure the sky, he can’t predict what exactly will occur, but he knows it will be bad. Sure enough, torrential rains fall for days, causing dams to break upriver and flood the land where Panchali lies. Ravi and his best friend, Vijay, work to save their neighbors from the cataclysm of water and mud that descends on Panchali, but many are killed, including Ravi’s grandparents. Bali, Vijay, and a few others manage to escape on an ancient raft, but Ravi is swept away, clinging to a piece of driftwood. Washed far downstream, Ravi is forced to contend with crocodiles, brigands, hunger, and deadly waters in order to reunite with his community. Along the way, he will discover the true power of existence, nature, and the extremes (good and bad) of which humans are capable. Henson’s prose is image-laden but overwrought, sacrificing flow in favor of complex syntax and 50-cent words: “Dazzling images appeared, but pushed by solar winds these light-chiseled pictures vanished, and in a flash of moments, ominous configurations materialized, etched by a spectral light.” The plot at the novella’s heart has a pleasing folkloric simplicity to it, though Henson spends so much page time making Ravi stare at the sky and ponder the nature of the universe that the story never develops sufficient momentum. While it seeks to evoke the epics of an earlier age, the final product feels more like a Hermann Hesse knockoff: a humorless series of episodes populated by flat characters coming to epiphanies that aren’t nearly as cerebral as they want them to be.
A serious but overwritten flood fable.Pub Date: May 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1681111872
Page Count: 122
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
