An inventive children’s fantasy whose earnest messages about cultivating emotional health through mindfulness target adults.
In this debut novel, a lonely little boy travels through strange lands in an odyssey of self-discovery.
Two years after Jack was abandoned by his parents at age 7, he is in yet another children’s home. Sad, angry, and isolated, Jack is bullied at school; his only friend is a battered toy dog named Ivanhoe; and he is tormented by dreams of a terrifying monster, sparked by the spiky branches of a looming monkey puzzle tree outside his bedroom window. One night, a cotton-stuffed monkey mysteriously appears, brings Ivanhoe to life, and tells Jack that “Satya, the dreamer of all dreams,” has the answer to his recurring nightmares. Joined by loyal Ivanhoe, now able to speak, as a supportive friend, Jack finds himself moving through shifting dreamscapes on a quest to reach the “quiet place,” where Satya dwells. The boy’s experiences in peculiar lands include a ride on the “Mindless Express,” where he nearly loses himself playing video games. Before Jack makes his empowering discovery of just who or what Satya is, he will learn not to run away from his feelings, to tame his stress-inducing “monkey mind,” to change a negative perspective by exercising forgiveness and kindness, and to trust himself to be his “own best friend.” Edgington, a yoga teacher, describes her engaging novel as an “adult allegory” “styled as a children’s book.” There is a great deal of imaginative storytelling on display here, and kids will undoubtedly enjoy Jack’s eventful journey and happy ending. Among the numerous odd characters that the hero encounters are “mountain lyings”—furry creatures that collect and frolic with all the lies people tell themselves and others—a discarded Christmas ornament who is sick of the holiday, and an ogre who embodies Jack’s worst fears. But this is fundamentally and unapologetically a self-help book whose child-centric plot exists solely as the framework for heartfelt lessons about self-realization and self-acceptance that should resonate with older, stressed-out readers despite the juvenile setting.
An inventive children’s fantasy whose earnest messages about cultivating emotional health through mindfulness target adults.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9980338-0-8
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’...
Fresh version of one of the world’s oldest epic poems, a foundational text of Western literature.
Sing to me, O muse, of the—well, in the very opening line, the phrase Wilson (Classical Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) chooses is the rather bland “complicated man,” the adjective missing out on the deviousness implied in the Greek polytropos, which Robert Fagles translated as “of twists and turns.” Wilson has a few favorite words that the Greek doesn’t strictly support, one of them being “monstrous,” meaning something particularly heinous, and to have Telemachus “showing initiative” seems a little report-card–ish and entirely modern. Still, rose-fingered Dawn is there in all her glory, casting her brilliant light over the wine-dark sea, and Wilson has a lively understanding of the essential violence that underlies the complicated Odysseus’ great ruse to slaughter the suitors who for 10 years have been eating him out of palace and home and pitching woo to the lovely, blameless Penelope; son Telemachus shows that initiative, indeed, by stringing up a bevy of servant girls, “their heads all in a row / …strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony.” In an interesting aside in her admirably comprehensive introduction, which extends nearly 80 pages, Wilson observes that the hanging “allows young Telemachus to avoid being too close to these girls’ abused, sexualized bodies,” and while her reading sometimes tends to be overly psychologized, she also notes that the violence of Odysseus, by which those suitors “fell like flies,” mirrors that of some of the other ungracious hosts he encountered along his long voyage home to Ithaca.
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’ recent translations of Homer; still, a readable and worthy effort.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-08905-9
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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