by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel ; translated by Jethro Soutar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 24, 2017
An understated, somber, and highly observant sketchbook of lives on the margins.
A group of refugees in North Africa share their stories and bide their time, agonizingly close to freedom.
Mount Gurugu in Morocco is near Melilla, a sliver of Spanish territory on the North African coast. Crossing to Melilla would allow the African refugees on the mountain to continue to Europe, but law enforcement on both sides are loath to have them. So the characters in this loosely plotted novel by Ávila Laurel (By Night the Mountain Burns, 2014) are stuck, left to philosophize and tell stories that alternate from comic to bleak. One man recalls a little girl who could morph into an old woman and back again; another recalls a provocative poem his father wrote; another recalls the gluttonous appetites of an aide to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Spinning yarns can be dispiriting, though (“Why do African stories always have to have unhappy endings?” one asks), so the men take modest balm in an ongoing soccer tournament. But politics and struggle are rarely far from their collective mind, and the novel intensifies in its latter pages, with stories of beatings by the Moroccan forestry police and abuse of women by men within the camp and a push to climb the fence into Melilla. Though there’s not a strong arc to the novel, Ávila Laurel’s layering of anecdotes makes it clear how dehumanizing the refugee experience is, with authorities looking for any excuse to expel them from the camp. “Police would have liked nothing better than to raze the camp and clear the mountain of black people,” he writes. And though Ávila Laurel’s prose (via Soutar’s translation) isn’t very stylish, it has the benefit of plainspoken, documentary force and breadth of vision, his narrative eye exploring a variety of elements of life in the camp but concluding with a unified struggle for optimism and liberation.
An understated, somber, and highly observant sketchbook of lives on the margins.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-908276-94-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: & Other Stories
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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