by Jonathan Twingley and illustrated by Jonathan Twingley ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2009
Slight and superficial, with no real connection between Ollie and the other characters.
Professional illustrator Twingley’s first novel tells how an aspiring illustrator spends his summer vacation.
As well as providing the striking cover art, the author festoons his story with drawings of his characters; at one point, they fill eight consecutive pages. Angular and idiosyncratic, they form a vivid contrast to Twingley’s bland prose. After his first year in a graduate program at a New York City art school, narrator Ollie Clay returns to his home state of North Dakota to regroup. The small tourist town of Marysville suits him fine. His friend Tank Wilson has a bike shop there. Ollie will help out and escort riders through the Badlands; Tank’s uncle has a vacant trailer where he can stay. Business is so slow that Ollie feels “like a mannequin in a storefront window.” He spends most of his time hanging out at the eponymous Saloon, “the beating heart of Marysville.” An innocent mama’s boy, Ollie experiences his first bender and his first joint while observing the saloon’s regulars. They include Willie Beck, a spastic old guy who’s the life of the party; the 300-pound Big Man, a biker writing a Hemingway-esque novel; an ancient bank clerk in her feather boa…gee, what a crazy bunch! Also hanging around is Lacy, a Native American free spirit and Tank’s on-again, off-again girlfriend with whom, inevitably, Ollie will have his first tryst. So does Ollie come of age? Not quite. He registers the alcoholism of Willie and Tank but doesn’t pursue its meaning. His break with Tank, which leaves him jobless and homeless, goes for nothing, and his slim epiphany that adults don’t know what it all means falls short of an acknowledgement that small-town life has its darker, imprisoning aspects.
Slight and superficial, with no real connection between Ollie and the other characters.Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8706-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2012
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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