A colorful and immersive comic tale about the transformation of a family ranch.
Big changes are in the works for a down-and-out Texas dude ranch in this literary novel.
Sally Rideout returned to the Rocking R ranch six months ago after years away. Now she manages the Texas property for her father, trying to keep the old dude ranch in the black while living in an ancient Airstream trailer out back. One day, after a morning run, she meets Kenneth Robinson, a guest who has come to the ranch with his two young horse-loving daughters. Kenneth runs a New Age–y spiritual institute in Austin—“We put on workshops about peak performance, finding the right livelihood…esoteric stuff like that”—and he thinks the Rocking R might be a great place to hold some of his organization’s retreats. That night, Sally’s father, JW, is attending a professional wrestling match. The lines between performer and audience get a little blurry, and JW ends up punching a wrestler in the face. This leads to an unexpected arrangement between JW and two of the wrestlers: tag-team journeymen Billy “The Kid” Hargis and Sterling Spencer, who are tired of traveling around the country and like Texas just fine. They ask JW to be their promoter, and he agrees, hoping to turn the Rocking R into a wrestlers’ training camp. But can one ranch play host to a bunch of rambunctious wrestlers and a group of yoga-loving peaceniks? Pounds’ (Grand Finale, 2019) prose animates his characters and their foibles with precision and understated humor: “Sally stared at him with all the spite she could muster. JW was shooting another of her plans in the foot, and she was tired of it. Having JW around was sometimes harder than raising a child. Or even a champion pig.” The plot is fueled by the dynamics of the many eclectic personalities that make up the ranch’s extended community, and readers will enjoy spending time in their collective presence. The book’s only flaw is that it’s easily a hundred pages too long (and maybe even more), which creates some lag in the pacing. That said, rambling yarns like this one can perhaps be forgiven when they meander a bit too far.
A colorful and immersive comic tale about the transformation of a family ranch.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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