Abbas’ (HWJN, 2013) latest novel mixes sci-fi, fantasy and pure adolescent adventure.
When Husam wakes up, he can’t even remember his own name. Even stranger, he’s in a place he’s never seen before—a huge, open room under one of several crystal-clear domes. And when he looks at himself, he realizes he’s about 20 centimeters taller, with the body of a fitness junkie instead of his usual couch potato physique and forgettable looks. Then the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen walks into the room and offers to show him around this strange place. Eventually introducing herself as Malak, she says she can only answer yes or no to his questions; if she were to simply explain where he is and what has happened to him, he could never go back to his own life. Husam insists that he has to return home to take care of his mother and sister, but the amazing world in which he finds himself—and the stunning Malak—is hard to resist. Then, after he has left the room, a stranger tries to kill him by crashing into Husam’s Jet Ski, and later, the mysterious Mr. Khaled tries to poison him. As his near-death experiences become more and more intense, Husam realizes that if he doesn’t figure things out quickly, he may never get the chance. Despite Husam’s overnight transformation—from a short, overweight wimp into a tall, fit action hero who can eat all he wants and have all the expensive toys he longed for—he doesn’t grow or change in a meaningful way. He was rather shallow and rudderless in the old world, and in the new world, though his supercharged brain makes it easy for him to do anything—outplaying Beethoven or out-fighting Bruce Lee, for example—he doesn’t develop the levels of discipline and responsibility needed to manage those skills wisely. Abbas seems to be trying to send a profound message through Husam’s story, but whatever that message is, it’s lost in a blur of heroics and fantasy—not to mention typos and muddled syntax: “I could not tell how much time I spent absorbed into my master piece, it was as if I was in a coma that I awakened from after I was done.”
A blur of self-indulgence and high-tech battles obscures a deeper message.
Pub Date: June 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-9948205838
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Yatakhayaloon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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