All in all, well below par…in the very best sense.
A teenager faces the exhilarating—and dismal—prospect of becoming a golfing phenom.
Having made the previous year’s U.S. Amateur semifinals, 17-year-old Frank vows to do even better this time around—and so he does, persevering through challenges and distractions to qualify for the Masters at Augusta National. Meanwhile, Frank’s determination to attend college and the cautionary example of Tiger Woods and his greedy, domineering dad notwithstanding, his divorced father has fallen into the clutches of a bottom-feeding agent who is steering him toward forcing his young phenom to turn pro. Though the phrase “suspenseful golf action” may strike most readers as cognitive dissonance, Feinstein (Backfield Boys, 2017, etc.) does a good job of driving his tale down the fairway by putting his protagonist through a series of spectacular feats and comebacks on real courses and filling out his cast with actual renowned golf pros, journalists, and officials. Along with laying in generous measures of golf’s jargon, and elaborate rituals of play as Frank rolls along to the Masters’ final round, the author tees off on the sport’s checkered racist and sexist history as well as unsavory corporate sponsors and the money-grubbing NCAA. Frank remains heroically above all of that, though…particularly after a climactic act of sportsmanship leaves him on the moral high ground. The book follows a white default.
All in all, well below par…in the very best sense. (Sports fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30595-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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