A page-turning story of a woman’s struggle to overcome abuse and make a new path forward.
In Meade’s (The Summer of the Disco King, 2011) novel, a teacher struggles to flee an abusive relationship while navigating her role at a new school.
Kate Ross is eager to start the year as a sixth-grade teacher at her district’s new middle school. Polished, professional and well-loved by her students, she seems to have it all. But she’s hiding a dark secret: Al, her husband of 10 years, is an abusive alcoholic, and she fears for the safety of both herself and her daughter. As Kate wrestles with her decision about whether to leave Al, life gets more complicated at work when a student is injured when Kate’s on recess duty. Meanwhile, Kate’s “looks and brains” attract the attention of several suitors, including the charming Pete Lange, a school administrator. Kate is equally smitten, but their co-worker relationship and her personal troubles seem to stand in the way of happiness. Meade, a former teacher, finds drama in the seemingly mundane details of middle school life—the stress an instructor feels when being evaluated, the delicate matter of dealing with an irate parent, the personality clashes between teachers. Though the stage occasionally seems crowded with minor players, Westmore Middle School is populated by an amusing cast of characters, and their foibles add levity to an otherwise serious story. But the heart of this novel involves Kate’s evolution from battered housewife to empowered single woman. It’s an emotionally resonant story, and Kate’s fear and anxiety are palpable as she moves gingerly around her husband, doing anything she can do to avoid provoking his wrath. Meade sprinkles her narrative with some tense action scenes—e.g., a threatening, late-night phone call from Al that causes Kate to flee her apartment in terror—that will keep readers on edge. Through her relatable, vivacious protagonist, Meade offers a window into the deep struggles of an abuse victim, with Kate first desperately hoping that Al will change, then finally realizing that “she could not continue to live under the same roof with him, not for any reason.”
A page-turning story of a woman’s struggle to overcome abuse and make a new path forward.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-938883-48-4
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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