This middle-grade novel sees two siblings time traveling after mischievous alterations remove morning breakfast from history.
One night, during a harsh New England snowstorm, 12-year-old Iphigenia, called Phigg, decides to make hot chocolate. Uncle Phineas is watching her and her younger brother, Clyde, while their parents, who are traveling professors, are on a trip. Suddenly, Phineas exclaims that he’s lost his pocket watch. He enlists Phigg’s help in searching for it but warns, “Whatever you do, do not open the case and look at the dials.” But when she finds it, the watch case is already open. Handling the watch prompts an explosion of thoughts and a sensory overload. Phigg regains her composure in a seemingly normal kitchen. Yet her parents are no longer professors—they are sewage inspectors who plan to serve raw liver and fish heads for the family’s nightly breakfast. Clyde, usually tinkering with electronics, is loafing until Phigg hands him the watch, which returns his memories of how life should be. Soon, the device begins speaking to them, introducing itself as the Watcher and informing the kids that they are now apprentice Timekeepers. Phineas has been kidnapped, so they must halt a Timebreaker and his minions who have damaged breakfast and nearly crippled civilization. In this fantasy, Berkin (Cut to Wagstaff, 2012) forges humor and intellect into quite a sharp narrative. His employment of time-travel motifs is sometimes goofy, like the dwarfish Timegoblins, who eat vital artifacts and bring chaos to history. Other devices, like quantum linkage, help the siblings borrow their appearances “from alternate versions” of themselves and introduce young readers to a complicated scientific field. Gastronomic themes also prevail, as time disturbances focus on the invention of the microwave in 1946; the creation of hot sauce in Louisiana in 1868; and the first baking of bread in ancient Egypt. The author offers young and older readers excellent wisdom: “Our world” is “an ongoing experiment of the dreams, ideas, successes and failures of billions of minds.” Timegoblin antics ensure an irresistible sequel.
This fantasy delivers an energetic ode to quantum mechanics and the culinary arts.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72416-680-7
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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