An intriguing premise, effective voice, and entertaining writing make for a winning tale about two musicians.
In this YA novel, a paralyzed, mute teenager gets a new roommate, an elderly jazz performer, who can hear his thoughts—and take him back in time.
It’s 1987, and Aaron Greenberg, 14, has been imprisoned for life by his own body. Once he was an active boy who played the trombone, but two years ago, he contracted a rare form of cryptococcal meningitis that left him paralyzed and, supposedly, brain-dead. Ever since, he’s lived in a nursing home, unable to communicate but fully cognizant. Aaron passes the time by entering his “mind palace”: not the memory technique but an imagined castle with fabulous rooms to explore. Then Aaron meets his new roommate, the elderly Solomon Felsher, who suffers from some dementia but was once a famous jazz musician, playing his saxophone with all the greats. He can hear Aaron’s thoughts—and occasionally, Solomon somehow pulls Aaron into reliving important episodes from the saxophonist’s past, in which the boy finds himself providing crucial help. For example, Aaron saves the day when he plays trombone during Solomon’s first Chicago gig. Solomon also has a pretty, kind 14-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, who learns the secret of his communication with Aaron. Convincing his doctor takes some doing, but over the next two years, with Sarah’s support, Aaron slowly recovers. In the real world, he’ll need all his new strength to help his friend Solomon one last time. Twiss (I AM SLEEPLESS: Sim 299, 2015, etc.) offers a captivating double premise with his story of a locked-in boy and time travel via dementia. The author skillfully weaves these threads together with another double story about Aaron’s and Solomon’s progress, one toward health, the other toward acceptance. Not only that, Twiss handles Solomon’s Yiddish-inflected voice and Aaron’s teenage sensibility nicely, develops the youthful romance sweetly, and provides exciting scenes of danger, daring, and escape. (One quibble: Aaron’s last name is sometimes spelled “Greenburg” in the text.) This warmhearted novel focuses on how people make connections and help each other through the most trying circumstances with good humor, music, and affection.
An intriguing premise, effective voice, and entertaining writing make for a winning tale about two musicians.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5201-1052-3
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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