by J. Michael Neal ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A triumphant tale of surviving abuse, embracing hockey, and finding love.
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A teenage athlete strives to overcome a traumatic past in this debut novel.
Phoebe Rose confronts adolescence having no idea who she is. Found at age 4 wandering around her Ohio neighborhood, she’s been raised in a series of foster homes. Maintaining a sense of normalcy in the wake of such upheaval remains difficult, so Phoebe dedicates herself to hockey from a young age. The game has been there when so many of the adults in her life have failed her. A few of her foster parents have been kind (especially the Wilsons, who she hoped could adopt her but were denied permission because they were black and she was white), but mostly, Phoebe has suffered throughout her childhood. Her last foster father, Mr. Jenkins, an evangelical with a mean streak, beat her repeatedly and raped her. When Phoebe sets off for a Minnesota college with a dream to play on its women’s hockey team, she vows to keep her physical and emotional scars to herself. After Phoebe makes the team, she quickly learns that she no longer needs to “keep surviving”—she can be a whole person again. Slowly opening up to her fellow players, Phoebe not only confesses the ordeals of her past life, but also discovers a safe space within the confines of the team. As time passes, Phoebe’s teammates help her to find both love and peace within herself. Neal’s decision to explore Phoebe’s life in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards is jarring at first—it takes the reader a while to figure out the timeline. But this strategy turns out to be a brilliant stroke of storytelling—it makes the reader feel as disjointed and uncomfortable as Phoebe does. Neal’s plot covers a lot of ground—Phoebe has been abandoned and mistreated while dealing with a chromosomal disorder and questioning her sexuality. Although this could, quite frankly, feel a bit depressing, Neal’s emotionally gripping narrative anchors Phoebe’s problems and prevents them from drifting too far into weepiness. Though most readers have not shared Phoebe’s trials, all should relate to her struggles—they would do well to absorb her story slowly, savoring both her pain and exultant promise.
A triumphant tale of surviving abuse, embracing hockey, and finding love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Melancholy Donkey Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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by Harper Lee
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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