An entertaining and thoughtful robot tale with a dramatic climax.
An android built to take the place of a seventh grader winds up hijacking his life in this middle-grade SF novel.
Seventh grade at Borelon Middle School has been no fun at all for Chuck Bowinger, almost 13 years old. Last year, he was short and cute; this year, he’s gangly and pimpled. Classes are more challenging; he can’t talk to girls; and Bailey Higgins trips him in the hallways. Wouldn’t it be great, Chuck muses, if he “could just lie in bed all day and game”? When his best friends, engineers Rainie Warren and Maxwell Lee, ask him to join their science fair project, at first C-student Chuck is reluctant. But he has a brilliant idea and convinces his friends to build a robot version of himself, who’ll take his place at school and win first prize on SciDay. Rainie and Max solve the technical problems, and the result is C.H.U.C.K.: Computerized Human Under Control of Kid. After constructing a secret hideaway in the basement, Chuck sends C.H.U.C.K. to school, controlling him like an avatar in a video game. Suddenly, he’s doing great in school and gym class while impressing his crush, Samantha Benedeer. But before long, C.H.U.C.K. develops a mind of his own. He wants Chuck’s life for himself—and that’s only the beginning. It’s boy versus android, leading to a striking SciDay showdown. Harelik (Monster Boy, 2017) has an engaging premise, with great appeal for any reader who ever wanted to retreat from the difficult world of middle school while still making a good showing in public. Of course, it’s not exactly believable that two seventh graders could construct such a perfect simulacrum, but the author provides somewhat plausible explanations (“I’m lucky my father owns a small but successful robotics laboratory right here in Borelon,” comments Max). Comic as the book often is, there are some serious undercurrents here about facing up to problems and actually living your life, pimples and all. Chuck also discovers a new appreciation for the warmth and exchanges of family life; even Bailey comes in for reassessment.
An entertaining and thoughtful robot tale with a dramatic climax.Pub Date: April 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73392-732-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Prawn Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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