A sharp, tongue-in-cheek adventure set in a world of testing run amok.
A novel of intrigue centered on standardized school testing.
Spring (American Education, 2013) starts his over-the-top satirical novel with two plot twists to hook readers: First, the U.S. secretary of education keels over dead at his podium while giving a speech to a group of education officials in Dayton, Ohio. Second, an explosion rocks the Booker T. Washington Charter School in Cincinnati, which investigators later trace to a small storage room. The day before, two teachers had been in that room, industriously changing students’ answers on federally mandated Common Core standardized tests. The teachers commiserated about how traumatic students found the tests—and how poorly the tests’ manufacturer, Brightstone, designed them. During the investigation, the FBI exposes connections among the Cincinnati school system, Brightstone, and Kiwi, a China-based tech company that manufactures computers and tablets loaded with Brightstone testing materials. (There are frequent references to the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, but they’re never presented in an exploitative manner.) Kiwi is also pioneering a series of robot teachers to replace humans; they would “scurry around the room, giving positive reinforcement with silicone kisses and hugs.” As suicides mount at Kiwi’s China production plant, Brightstone executives huddle in their boardroom—their expensively tailored suits serving as shorthand for their general villainy—and gripe about the “crazies and teachers” complaining about Common Core (“You always have crackpots like that whining about something”). The high-spirited, engaging plot eventually branches into governmental conspiracies, financial misdeeds and international skullduggery—mostly involving scheming Chinese businessmen intent on using Kiwi technology and Brightstone greed to make a killing in the impending global robot-teacher market. The real enemy throughout, however, is the Common Core agenda itself—a stance that educators may find drolly entertaining but may somewhat limit the novel’s appeal.
A sharp, tongue-in-cheek adventure set in a world of testing run amok.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615873541
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Phoenix Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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