Stomping down the road, away from her all-male family in a rage, Liz meets ancient Sally Beck, who invites her into the local manor's topiary garden to hear how she once became a boy. Fleeing her own family, Sally donned her brother's clothes, changed her name to Jack, and found a job as a gardener's boy. Though forced to unmask after several years, she was allowed to stay on, becoming at last head gardener and living out her days surrounded by carefully trimmed, oddly shaped greenery. Liz finds both disturbed dreams and solace in Sally's tale: visions of horned figures and huge shears, but also, ultimately, a firmer sense of self as well. For a story about transformation, what better illustrator than Browne? His seven enigmatic paintings feature looming, massive topiary, in which an occasional female body is the only recognizable shape, and garden tools or shadows the only sign of habitation. This strange, subtle episode, originally published in Howker's Badger on the Barge and Other Stories (Greenwillow, 1984), stands on its own in this small, neat volume, printed in well proportioned but tiny type. Thoughtful readers shouldn't be bothered by the many Briticisms, but there's an appended glossary just in case. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-531-06891-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
Decades after the events of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009), teenager Gabry lives in relative safety. Despite the Barrier keeping the ravaging zombies out of town, Gabry is a terrified homebody who wants only to stay sheltered with her mother, the refugee heroine of Forest. Her nervousness is justified; when Gabry is peer-pressured into sneaking past the Barrier for a night of adolescent rebellion, several of her friends are zombified. (One wonders, if teens sneaking out for a snog is so dangerous to society, how there any humans left at all.) The ensuing chaos sends Gabry into the wilderness where, encumbered by revelations about love and family, she encounters zombie-worshiping cultists, the dangerous remnants of the army and her own past. Whatever comes between Gabry and her mother, there’s one thing they definitely have in common: Like her mother, Gabry experiences an angst-ridden, gloomy love triangle while fleeing from zombie hordes in the forest’s depths. Fast-paced despite the mawkish romance, it will be gobbled up by fans of the first volume like brains. (Horror. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 9, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-385-73684-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
This story presents an alien invasion from two unique viewpoints. Megs is 12, trapped alone in the parking garage of a Los Angeles hotel, forced to scrounge for food and water while avoiding alien spaceships outside and security guards who have taken over the hotel with vicious disregard for the safety of their “guests” inside. Josh is about to turn 16, trapped in his house in Washington state with his father and dog, watching their world being slowly but surely destroyed, day after day, from his living-room window. Both have to deal with supplies that shrink with every rationed meal. No phones, no radio or television, no electricity and no ability to step out of shelter without being “deleted”—this is a new world that only the truly brave can exist in. Written in short chapters that alternate between Megs and Josh, this masterful debut grabs readers by the throat from the first page and never lets go. It is clear at the end that there’s a lot more story to tell, and one can only hope that a sequel is not far behind. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60898-011-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Namelos
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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