Though slightly uneven, this suspenseful coming-of-age tale packs a punch.
A teen must protect his family from a powerful gang in Farley’s debut.
In the summer of 1978, Arcangel Valley is ruled by the Blackjacks, a notorious gang with deep roots in the dead-end California town. Fifteen-year-old RJ has other things on his mind, such as his disabled little brother, Charley, whose unspecified foot deformity gives him a mysterious “greater purpose,” and the death of his father, a Vietnam War veteran. But when the Blackjacks order RJ to harass the mysterious old man who’s moved into their territory, RJ must protect himself and his family without losing his soul. As his attempts to outsmart the Blackjacks grow desperate and the old man becomes a confidant, RJ unearths shocking family secrets and wrestles with his conscience and past trauma. Though RJ confronts weighty topics—among them corruption and redemption; the power of storytelling; and the haunting aftermath of war—his evocative, unflinching narration keeps the pages turning. However, the author’s heavy-handed literary and religious symbolism, drawn from The Canterbury Tales and Catholicism, sometimes overshadows realistic plot and character development. Charley, nearly defined by his deformity, is barely developed despite his closeness to RJ; the ending is somewhat far-fetched. Many characters, including RJ, appear to be White. RJ’s best friend is brown-skinned and Latinx.
Though slightly uneven, this suspenseful coming-of-age tale packs a punch. (Historical fiction. 16-18)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64129-117-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Soho Teen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Gorgeous prose for readers willing to be blindsided
Lyrical magical realism paints four generations of women with tragic lives until a shocking violation fixes everything. First-person narrator Ava, who isn’t even born until nearly halfway through the novel, never becomes the main character. Instead, the novel opens with Ava’s great-grandmother in France and follows the family through the ill-fated romances and personal calamities that chase them to Manhattan and eventually Seattle. Surrounded by death and despised by their neighbors, the Lavender women live in seclusion even from one another. Ava’s grieving grandmother Emilienne sees ghosts and ignores her daughter, Viviane. Viviane pines away from blighted love while raising its fruit: twins Ava and Henry. In the metaphor-made-flesh style of the genre, both children wear their oddness on their bodies. Henry would be autistic if his strangeness and language difficulties weren’t conceived as fantastical abilities, and Ava is born with wings. Isolated and, ironically, flightless, Ava longs to be a normal girl; her only real social contact is an earthy, vivacious neighborhood girl named Cardigan. The story’s language is gorgeous: “I turned and spread my wings open, as wide as they would go, feeling the wind comb its cold fingers through my feathers.” Disturbingly, a horrific assault acts as the vehicle of redemption, magically bringing people together for reasons that make sense only in the dreamlike metaphysics of literary device.
Gorgeous prose for readers willing to be blindsided . (Magical realism. 16 & up)Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6566-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Repellent.
After his burnout mom fails in her suicide attempt, 14-year-old drug addict Jaime is sent to live with his estranged father, a superrich hotshot art dealer.
The book is filled to the brim with angst, profanity and drug use in what feels more like a celebration of bourgeois ennui than a proper examination. An Internet phenom who’s released an album online and posts videos of himself reading his poetry and short stories, Jaime is impossibly talented, attractive, intelligent and sexually charged. Every woman Jaime finds himself attracted to (including adults) offers herself to Jaime in increasingly gratuitous ways. It is hard to see Jaime as anything but a monstrous, spoiled brat, unable to see past his own pain and libido and incapable of complex thought or, apparently, character growth. At over 500 pages, the novel is an exhausting read. There are long passages in which nothing of consequence to character or plot takes place, just lots of navel-gazing. The characters discuss music with no sharp insight, making the endeavor feel like a laundry list of bands that the author really wants readers to know about (he goes so far as to include a playlist at the end of the book). The characters are flat, the romance undercooked, and the only individual of true interest is an author who awkwardly defends criticisms of his books—ones that mirror those made against Myers’ own previous works.
Repellent. (Fiction. 16 & up)Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8722-2
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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