A warming, delightful novel unabashed in its depiction of life’s eccentricities.
In Starypan’s debut novel, a random act of compassion leads to an eventful, winding journey of self-realization and transcendence.
The novel’s protagonist, nicknamed “Biter,” finds himself out of a job as a zoo employee when he decides to release a recently acquired wolverine back into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. This radical decision costs him his livelihood, but it also affords him a chance to rethink his life’s plan. He tracks down his friend, JT, and an acquaintance, Ryan, and soon sets out on a trip through Washington state’s rugged Pasayten Wilderness. During the journey, he briefly becomes disconnected from the group, prompting him to think about an earlier time when he almost froze to death on another mountain. After he safely returns home, he patches together a living from a handful of odd, but oddly rewarding, jobs. As a restaurant dishwasher, he meets Mickey, a down-and-out war veteran who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder due to witnessing the gruesome combat death of his friend. Biter also gets work as a research assistant for a professor studying clams. Happily, though, he ends up as a bartender at the Red Dragon, a local hangout where JT also works, where he can cultivate a new beginning. But just when things are settling down, tragedy occurs, and Biter must decide whether he can sustain his new life. This gently written yet perky novel grew out of an attempt by Starypan to write a memoir; he even shares his fictional protagonist’s nickname. The result is simultaneously moving and unsentimental. It manages to link together what initially seem to be nothing more than a series of discrete, disjointed episodes in one man’s haphazard life. Throughout, the author weaves Biter’s memories of his past into his present-day narrative, rendering the main story all the richer. In doing so, he creates a thoughtful, quirky and even comic chronicle that demonstrates how even apparent chaos can resolve into a coherent story.
A warming, delightful novel unabashed in its depiction of life’s eccentricities.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495429255
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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