Imaginative and touching; like India, a sparkling jewel in the crown.
In Parry’s debut novel, a 12-year-old orphan finds herself embroiled in a royal mystery.
Having lost her mother in a monsoon shortly after birth, Isabella Rockwell was raised in India by her devoted father, a sergeant in the English army, and Abhaya, their loving housekeeper. A secret mission pulls her father away, but when he vanishes and is presumed dead, Isabella undertakes a futile search for him. Shortly after, she’s sent from the only country she’s ever known to a London household. She’s meant to learn a trade, but indentured servitude doesn’t suit her headstrong, independent nature, so she quietly slips out onto London’s filthy streets in a bitter winter. She finds herself, à la Oliver Twist, adopted by a group of endearing orphans who scrabble for food and artfully steal to get by. In an opportune moment, Isabella heroically saves the life of a well-dressed young girl on a runaway horse, injuring herself in the rescue. She wakes to find herself in Kensington Palace, the home of Princess Alixandrina Hanover, the girl she saved. During her convalescence, the two girls establish a sisterly relationship, and the irony of their contrasting situations becomes a driving force in the story’s narrative: Isabella is an impoverished orphan now freed from the bonds of parental authority, yet once cherished by her father and housekeeper; Princess Alix, virtually a prisoner of the palace, feels desperately unloved by her family. Meanwhile, suspicious, near-fatal accidents continue to befall Alix, and Isabella secretly begins to investigate. Are the accidents merely coincidental, or is someone in the royal family trying to kill the princess? All the while, Isabella continues to dream about returning to her beloved India. Will she betray Alix and steal from the palace to pay for her passage? Parry’s descriptions are as varied as they are rich, from the scents of Abhaya’s Indian healing herbs to the sounds of London’s bustling streets and the opulence in the British royalty. A sizable cast of beautifully developed, memorable characters makes solving the mystery even more deliciously puzzling, and readers will be guessing to the surprising end. The well-written dialogue is full of charming colloquialisms, and much of Parry’s descriptions border on the poetic: “The Duchess’ voice was light and insubstantial, like the bubble on top of milk just arrived in the pail.”
Imaginative and touching; like India, a sparkling jewel in the crown.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0957332102
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Nielsen Book
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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