An engaging, if uneven, thriller about a distressing investigation.
In Jones’ chilling debut thriller, a precocious Tunisian adolescent discovers that high-level government officials are involved in a sex trade involving young children.
A’dan Didaz wants nothing more than an A-Phone for his 13th birthday. Instead, his journalist mother, Sohaira, surprises him with a trip to the fictional country of Gumibel, on which he will be accompanied by his father, Pau. A’dan is baffled by his mother’s sudden determination to send him and his father far away, her recent decision to wear a hijab, and the appearance of a mysterious, yellow violin case in her office. His father, a Catalan freedom fighter and journalist, believes that Sohaira has renewed her investigation into a Gumibelian-Belanese arms-for-drugs connection. Pau, meanwhile, makes the dubious decision to involve A’dan in his investigation of a pedocriminality ring. Pau leads his 13-year-old son on a multicountry tour, where they learn about children as young as two being sexually abused by their parents and grandparents. He soon finds out that influential politicians may be involved. Jones’ disturbing account is based upon real-life reports from the late 1990s; the author points out that pedophilia is not a new Internet-based perversion but one as old as history. Unfortunately, the narrative occasionally lacks fluidity, as it’s dominated by flashbacks and A’dan’s summaries of research materials he has read. The author’s frequent use of aliases and nicknames may also confuse readers, particularly with such a dizzying array of characters. It’s difficult to parse this novel’s intended audience; with its teenage protagonist, it might seem aimed at a middle-school audience, but the subject matter may be too upsetting for all but the most mature readers. Indeed, A’dan, wise beyond his years, concludes that too many people simply cannot confront such disgusting realities. The story concludes without an easy resolution, but Jones’ ending promises a sequel.
An engaging, if uneven, thriller about a distressing investigation.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1479150533
Page Count: 184
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
