Fast-paced, humorous YA fiction with a problematic ending.
In Moore’s YA fantasy, dreams are just as legitimate as reality.
Precocious protagonist Eri Lane and her gay best friend, Malcolm, are impervious to the human need for sleep. They attend a high school for gifted children during the day. At night, via place-holding golems, they travel to a parallel reality they dub “Dream.” Their purpose there? To prevent the prospect of “Dream” and “Wake” from merging together. Sassy dialogue between 14-year-olds, disquiet about “gifted” high schools and gentrification, clever pop-culture references—i.e. Britney Spears’s shaved head, Robot Unicorn Attack, among others—and a didactic sensibility about how to abide with single and/or divorcing parents all qualify this work as young-adult fiction. For the most part, Moore provides wholesome content for her audience. Characters possess an enviable, charming self-righteousness. Narration moves swiftly. Dry humor—Eri “was becoming increasingly concerned with the size of her golem’s butt, and what it implied”—abounds. Moore’s Dream construct also extends beyond just a storyline: In one scene, Eri and her crush, Pete, discuss Carl Jung’s theory of “collective unconscious.” But the moral sure-footing that Moore creates becomes null by the end: The climax involves Eri and a chef’s knife on a school bus. (Moore mollifies the act, but its implications are dubious.) This plot twist may end up alienating most of Moore’s audience: The story’s setup seems apt for young readers, while the ending seems fit only for adults. Egregious spelling and syntax errors also damage the story’s impact. But concerned parents may feel less remiss about improperly hyphenated compound modifiers than they do about a teenage killer.
Fast-paced, humorous YA fiction with a problematic ending.Pub Date: March 17, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 173
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An insider’s view of the growth of the defense industry, with a fascinating roundup at book’s end of how the world has...
Coburn chronicles a profession, society and life in evolution.
More encompassing and inviting than the title suggests, public contract law may have limited audience appeal until its impact on individuals and events that shaped the 20th century is understood. Coburn’s career and life have placed him at the center of power as well as on the outskirts. The shoulder-rubbing came from birth (he played as a child with Poppy Bush); the in-but-not-entirely-of aspect started later, after his family lost its wealth, yet arranged a boarding school and Ivy League education for him. His first position, as a staff attorney in the Navy’s Office of General Counsel, linked his career to the growing postwar defense-contracting industry. There, and later in private practice, Coburn participated in establishing procedures, model contracts, codified laws and ultimately a section of the American Bar Association. (True to the title, he details negotiations, disputes, lawsuits and rulings, footnoted with legal citations fit for an appellate brief.) In his private life, which he recollects with less depth, Coburn was in a committed gay relationship that lasted 49 years, till his partner’s death, and cost him government employment when the fact surfaced during a job screening. While describing their life and homes together and in Key West, Coburn keeps the curtain drawn on the challenges of being gay in his position and family, with the exception of acknowledging the contrary dictates of his childhood. The reader accustomed to modern-day tell-all tendencies may want more on his personal experience, out of keeping as it is with the author’s adherence to propriety and protocol.
An insider’s view of the growth of the defense industry, with a fascinating roundup at book’s end of how the world has changed, for good and bad, throughout the author’s life, interspersed with appointment-book style memoirs and annotated with names, family lineages, residential addresses and decor, vacation spots and eulogies.Pub Date: May 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470008673
Page Count: 418
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Imaginative storytelling with real literary depth.
Lush landscapes, enchanted happenings, tangled roots and violence suffuse this beguiling collection of stories set in the highlands of Guatemala.
Quince, the narrator of these interlocking stories, is a writer living in the village of Panimache, near three volcanoes and a deep blue lake. He serves as a keen observer of the vibrant, tense surroundings in a land that “bled from a war no one wanted to notice.” Panimache is a town divided by conflict, caste and consciousness. It’s teetering between bourgeois aspirations and Mayan peasant culture, seemingly placid but on edge from the fighting between government soldiers and guerillas and simmering with repressed bad memories. The title novella introduces a diverse, intriguing set of characters—shopkeepers and restaurateurs; Quince’s friend Uno, a nature photographer and reputed shaman; El Capitan Lobo, the urbane army commander who feels apologetic about the brutal counterinsurgency he’s waging (“[s]ometimes we massacre the Indians, other times it’s the guerillas”); and La China, a whore longing to be a muse. These and other figures recur in 10 more yarns that are often shot through with exquisite threads of magical realism: A youth is beguiled to his doom by a gorgeous vampire; a con man makes his living with a fortunetelling sparrow; a man’s frantic search for buried treasure yields an astounding payoff; an orphaned, ostracized Mayan girl hides herself in the shapes of birds and animals. Moulun’s clear prose balances sensual sounds, colors and foods against a deadpan humor and a detached, meditative mood. His writing has a fablelike quality, featuring strong narratives linked to mythic themes, but it’s also full of social nuance and subtle psychological shadings. Moulun transforms Guatemala’s troubled, complex reality into a rich, compelling aesthetic vision.
Imaginative storytelling with real literary depth.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 9780985774400
Page Count: 238
Publisher: EgretBooks.com
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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