A simmering psychological thriller bolstered by a dynamic narrative voice and a few unexpected twists.
A group of close friends find themselves embroiled in a sinister plot in novelist and playwright Odentz’s (Wicked Dead, 2016, etc.) latest YA novel.
Four high school seniors wake up deep in the woods on the outskirts of bucolic Meadowfield, Massachusetts. To their horror, each of their bodies has been altered in some fashion, and none of the kids have any memories of the previous night. Odentz has the quick-witted Weston Kahn narrate the story with youthful personality and humor as he observes his friends, including local jock Anders Stephenson, who’s covered in blood; alien-conspiracy theorist Robbie Myers, who’s missing his glass eye; and confidante Marcy, who’s missing her pants. Weston himself has a tiny, triangular symbol burned into his arm. The shell-shocked quartet stumbles home, and each teen attempts to cover for the others. Further mayhem begins almost immediately: Weston thinks that Sandra Berman, a teenage girl who went missing three years ago, may have been the victim of a homicide just across the street from her house—the victim of a serial killer who threatens the sleepy town’s sense of security. Blurry memories start to return to the teen foursome, Anders begins exhibiting strangely violent behavior, and they eventually determine that someone drugged them all. They attempt to solve the mystery themselves even while admitting that going to “a hospital is probably the right thing to do—even the smart thing to do.” As the slightly convoluted puzzle pieces start to fall into place, deep secrets are revealed and guilty parties make their move to silence the group. Overall, this novel is creative, atmospheric, and effectively detailed, and Odentz maintains a firm grasp on the conversational tone and flow of the story, which seems tailor-made for YA suspense fans. He builds out his novel subtly and incrementally with interrelated characterizations of the teenagers and their family members, and he keeps the story moving with fine pacing, realistic dialogue, and a good sense of place. Throughout, he empowers his characters with intriguing histories, melodramatic infighting, and general teenage growing pains that bring them to vibrant life.
A simmering psychological thriller bolstered by a dynamic narrative voice and a few unexpected twists.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-6119483-6-3
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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