A compelling work of fiction that successfully captures the anger, frustration, and freedom of kids on the brink of...
Lapoma’s (The Summer of Crud, 2018) novel tells the story of a group of misfit boys navigating adolescence in northern Buffalo, New York.
James Lombardi narrates the story of his childhood, during which he contended with a bullying clan of seventh-graders at his Catholic middle school; an angry, unforgiving father; and a gaggle of siblings. James calls his mental illness “the Darkness”; it manifested as periods of murderous “Evil Thoughts,” disembodied voices, and random violent outbursts. “A war had begun inside my head.” James reflects. “I was nine. I had no idea I was now both superhero and villain.” Still, he managed to remain focused thanks to basketball games, schoolwork, an ambitious newspaper-delivery route, and a series of mind-calming rituals to ensure sleep. He played basketball at Hammond Park with a rebellious group of outcasts that included Gerry, Tony, James, ringleader Ray, and others. They all found common ground on the courts, and as they incrementally matured over the next few years, they experimented with sex and drugs and dreamed of becoming basketball stars. Lapoma’s first-person narrative effectively and evocatively captures James’ frail emotional state as he stumbles through boyhood and his early adult years. The author is wise to incorporate moments of humor into his story, which leavens other parts of the book, such as those that focus on James’ psychologically precarious psyche. He also demonstrates a distinct knack for characterization for both his central players and peripheral ones, such as the local monsignor, who spouts expletives out a rectory window. The description of 13-year-old Luke, known among the kids as the “King of Hammond,” is also skillfully handled. Overall, this is an earnest, hardscrabble story of restless youth, mental illness, and the saving grace of sports-inspired camaraderie.
A compelling work of fiction that successfully captures the anger, frustration, and freedom of kids on the brink of adulthood.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9988403-5-2
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Almendro Arts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The fine Israeli writer Yehoshua (Open Heart, 1996, etc.) makes a lengthy journey into the year 999, the end of the first millennium. Indeed, it is the idea of a great journey that is the heart of the story here. Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant has come a long distance to France to seek out his nephew and former partner Abulafia. Ben Attar, the nephew, and a third partner, the Muslim Abu Lutfi, had once done a lucrative business importing spices and treasures from the Atlas Mountains to eager buyers in medieval Europe. But now their partnership has been threatened by a complex series of events, with Abulafia married to a pious Jewish widow who objects vehemently to Ben Attar’s two wives. Accompanied by a Spanish rabbi, whose cleverness is belied by his seeming ineffectualness; the rabbi’s young son, Abu Lutfi; the two wives; a timorous black slave boy, and a crew of Arab sailors, the merchant has come to Europe to fight for his former partnership. The battle takes place in two makeshift courtrooms in the isolated Jewish communities of the French countryside, in scenes depicted with extraordinary vividness. Yehoshua tells this complex, densely layered story of love, sexuality, betrayal and “the twilight days, [when] faiths [are] sharpened in the join between one millennium and the next” in a richly allusive, languorous prose, full of lengthy, packed sentences, with clauses tumbling one after another. De Lange’s translation is sensitively nuanced and elegant, catching the strangely hypnotic rhythms of Yehoshua’s style. As the story draws toward its tragic conclusion—but not the one you might expect—the effect is moving, subtle, at once both cerebral and emotional. One of Yehoshua’s most fully realized works: a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-48882-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.
Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.Pub Date: March 22, 1989
ISBN: 0143038095
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
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