A memorable debut, both timely and universal in its themes.
A small wooden doll links tales of wartime tragedy and tenderness across the 20th century and into the 21st.
As told in flashbacks within a present-tense frame story, the doll is first given as a keepsake to a British Tommy by his sweetheart, Meg, in 1918. When he is killed at Ypres, a Jewish German soldier finds it, passing it decades later to a child in Terezín. Years after, the American son of a Prague war orphan carries it to Vietnam. He gives it to a village child, and she, to her Canadian son—who marches off to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, leaving it behind to be found in a Toronto yard sale in 2007 by Elizabeth, teenage daughter of an engineer about to depart for Afghanistan. In each era, the figurine’s owners, family, friends and adversaries come across as distinct characters, with well-defined lives and motives. Along with penetrating insights into the feelings of those who went to fight, stayed behind or just became victims of circumstance, Gold supplies enough historical background to give readers an understanding of the complex events and rationales that drove each war. Some of the violence is joltingly explicit, and ultimately, Elizabeth has a devastating loss of her own to suffer, but her involvement with the doll leads to a final scene of both resolution and comfort.
A memorable debut, both timely and universal in its themes. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-927583-29-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Readers who hungry purely for lots of effective detail of an ancient culture, time and place may find this a...
Having made her way through the European princesses of note (Duchessina, 2007, etc.), Meyer dishes up historical-fiction-lite in this imagined account of Cleopatra’s coming of age.
Readers follow the mildly compelling first-person account in sections, from the 10-year-old touring the Nile with her father, through the teenage power struggles with her maniacal sisters, to the securing of her throne, which she pointedly ensures at the cost of her virginity: “As the night goes on, the magnetism between us grows as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides. By the next morning I am Caesar’s mistress. I am not Caesar's conquest. He is mine.” The occasionally vivid voice of an intelligent young woman lapses into uncharacteristic moments of denseness (as she fails to heed advice she’s just given herself) or starchy historical or cultural explanations for the readers’ benefit, often inserted into conversation (“But you are right—[Caesar] has a wife in Rome. Her name is Calpurnia. His first wife, Cornelia, bore him his only child, Julia, and both are dead. He divorced his second wife, Pompeia…”). For such an exciting history, the narrative arc lags under the inconsistent voice.
Readers who hungry purely for lots of effective detail of an ancient culture, time and place may find this a digestible-enough vehicle for it, with oodles of backmatter for support. (Historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-8727-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
What are the chances that a granted wish will go off without a hitch—particularly when both the Fairy Godmother and the Narrator are ham-handed bumblers? Rightly regarding their hereditary right to one wish each as a curse, both the aristocratic Battersbys and their American branch, the Stevens family, have forbidden their offspring to make even idle wishes, ever. Enter black-sheep relative the Duchess Chessimyn of Cheshire, who pops up when geeky teen Ralph Stevens visits his three heretofore-unmet British cousins, and persuades the young folk to defy their parents’ ban. Disasters ensue. First, idealistic cousin Cecil’s efforts to liberate a land of downtrodden fairies kill his gloomy half-sister Beatrice. Then Ralph enters into a determined search through Purgatory’s rival cities of the “Recently-Living” and the more gruesomely decomposed “Soon-to-be-Dead” for Beatrice’s spirit. The confusion is compounded by the intrusive and increasingly ill-tempered Narrator’s efforts to maintain control of the unruly plot. By the end events have taken such a turn for the surreal that a hastily summoned Review Board of the Royal Narratological Society has to step in to right matters. The self-conscious metafictional folderol is likely to lose more readers than it gains, but Archer (pseudonym for YA suspense novelist Eliot Schrefer) creates engaging characters and telling throwaway lines and ultimately wrestles the family conflict at the core of this into a sort of resolution. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-16040-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
