None
Ray’s debut novel presents the story of a young woman suffering years of abuse at the hands of a new woman in her father’s life.Jacynta Roth, who lost her mother to cancer just three years ago, has a unique perspective on her father’s new live-in girlfriend Irma: She once saw Irma violently abuse her own two sons. But her father, Ned, doesn’t believe it. Soon, Irma’s desire to control Ned’s six children turns into physical torment—with the bulk of the abuse directed toward the youngest, Jacynta. As the years pass, her other siblings leave or mysteriously disappear; for example, Ned’s claim that Jacynta’s older sister, Michelle, is staying with their grandmother is clearly a lie. Jacynta, however, continues to endure Irma’s torture, which includes kicks, hair-pulling and locking her outside in the freezing winter snow. Jacynta’s only chance of escape, it seems, is to run away—but because few people believe that she’s being abused, she fears that she’ll be sent right back. Ray’s novel is a harrowing portrayal of child abuse made even more unsettling by the fact that it’s a true story (with names changed). Readers will likely find it difficult to sympathize with any of the secondary characters: Ned is aware of Irma’s mistreatment but does very little to stop it, and others in a position to help the girl, such as social worker Claudette, seem incapable of doing so. There are instances of optimism, however, that offset the book’s bleak tone: Jacynta’s brother Adam supports his baby sister and calms her when she’s angry or upset; and, in one of the story’s most heartbreaking moments, a friend’s father treats Jacynta so well that she cries with happiness. Ray presents the story in present tense, so there’s no retrospection at the end to adequately wrap everything up; in fact, she leaves more than one of the siblings’ fates vague. But the bittersweet conclusion, which leaves Jacynta facing an unknown future, promises more stories about the young girl’s life.An inspiring, if often despondent, novel about one girl’s fortitude and perseverance.
None NonePub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1936954018
Page Count: 354
Publisher: JRayDesigns
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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