A rosy, feel-good sports tale.
A YA novel tells the story of teens’ coming-of-age in a football-obsessed city.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, football is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Senior Janus Mann, the starting quarterback of his high school football team, has run afoul of his coach and is worrying he doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader. He is still mourning his dead father and has regular telepathic conversations with Curly Lambeau, the legendary (and deceased) coach of the Green Bay Packers. “Curly often replies with a voice in my head,” narrates Janus. “And no, it’s not my imagination, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Janus isn’t the only one with problems. His crush, the flute player Asha Silver, is struggling with her alcoholic ex-boxer father. Barnaby Grayna is the son of Janus’ coach, though he doesn’t play football because his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has confined him to a wheelchair. The main antagonist in Barnaby’s life is his effective (but disrespectful) physical therapist. The three teens work together to get out from underneath the weights in their lives—physical limitations, parental expectations, and familial histories—in order to meet adulthood on their own terms. In a town that loves football, Janus, in particular, must contend with the ghosts of the past to free himself for the future. Mancheski (Shoot for the Stars, 2014, etc.) writes in an amiable prose that captures both Janus’ voice and the mysticism inherent in old-time football. Here Janus and Asha visit Lambeau Field: “ ‘Ghosts…’ I say....The wind through the empty seats creates a low pitch, like an oboe being played a quarter-mile away. If you close your eyes it becomes a monk-like hum. ‘Of twenty million Packer fans past.’ ” The characters are endearing and well-drawn, but the novel’s plot is somewhat shaggy and meandering. The book takes a long time to get to a fairly boilerplate ending, and it could easily be 100 pages shorter. But Mancheski deftly paints adolescence in the same dreamy nostalgia as the early days of football. It may not ring completely true to readers, but it’s a pleasant enough place to spend some time.
A rosy, feel-good sports tale.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2121-6
Page Count: 372
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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