by Jan Karol Tanaka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 2015
A solid, heartwarming tale about an orphan’s travails.
A young boy in 1827 struggles to keep his new home in this debut children’s book.
After losing his Russian father and Aleut mother in the same year, Misha Alexandrov must travel from Archangel, Alaska, to the Ross Fortress in Northern California. He is accompanying Dimitri Makarova, his father’s best friend, who is starting work as a carpenter in the settlement. But Misha’s stay in his new home is almost instantly beset by a run of bad luck, and Stepan Tarasov, the construction foreman, becomes convinced that the boy is a jinx. Tarasov insists that Misha must prove his worth to the settlement or else he will be sent back to Alaska and an uncertain future. Misha has found a community with Chilan, a Kashaya Native American boy who is his first friend, and Kanoa, the Hawaiian man who rooms with Misha and Dimitri. Misha does not want to return to Alaska, but there are few opportunities for a young boy to prove himself. He must take whatever work he can get, endear himself to his fellow settlers, and avoid the wrath of Tarasov if he wants to stay in his new surroundings. Tanaka’s story sheds light on a little-known component of California colonization and the multicultural settlement at the real Fort Ross in what is now Sonoma County. Though the novel uses the classic children’s-literature trope of an orphan, it works hard to emphasize the importance of families of choice and underscores the many ways that a boy can find mentors and guardians. The book’s main flaw is its pacing, as it seems to be in a rush to find completion, which comes at the cost of a fuller sense of the cast. Scenes that could be expanded and that would show Misha’s growth as a character to greater effect, such as the initial mistrust felt by the local villagers toward the boy, are rushed through in a handful of pages. The story is at its best when focusing on characterization, such as explaining Dimitri’s reasons for taking in Misha or fleshing out Kanoa.
A solid, heartwarming tale about an orphan’s travails.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-54484-6
Page Count: 152
Publisher: River's End Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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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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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