Entertainingly amusing while also showing sensitivity to children’s complex emotional lives.
An 8-year-old English boy travels by spaceship with a dapper lizard and a troll in this children’s fantasy novel.
Oscar William Tyler of Surbiton, England, discovers a large, talking, pipe-smoking lizard in his garden, dressed in “a shirt, waistcoat, trousers, and bedroom slippers.” The creature reminds Oscar of Grumps, his beloved, recently deceased grandfather. The lizard reveals that his name is “Larry the Lounge Lizard.” Over the coming weeks, the two enjoy several chats, and Oscar is excited to meet Larry’s troll friend, Nicholas Fijmeister, who Larry says is “decent by troll standards…he doesn’t very often try to kill his relatives.” The three take trips in the garden’s apple tree (which magically turns into a spaceship) to Larry’s home world, Tarastaria, which is inhabited by an array of creatures, including trolls like Nicholas, monkeys, humanlike “sloggles,” and monkeylike “gonks.” They’re ruled over by the tyrant Emperor Brummelfritz, whom Larry—an anti-royalist, like Grumps—calls “Emperor Bumface.” Oscar is shocked by the emperor’s cruelty, which includes the slated public execution of an innocent gonk, so he and his friends concoct a daring rescue that could bring democracy to Trolland. After some time back home, Oscar gets a new perspective on his experiences and his grief; his understanding mother says, “Maybe we all somehow find another world to inhabit in order to cope.” Clark’s debut provides silly humor that will appeals to kids’ love of the grotesque, but it also deftly brings out Oscar’s grief over his parents’ divorce and, especially, Grumps’ death; at one point, Oscar compares the latter to “a knife thrust into his heart.” The resemblances between Larry and Grumps are subtle but definite, and young readers can make connections between Oscar’s wish for continued closeness with Grumps and his eagerness to have Larry in his life. Another strength is the fact that Oscar’s parents aren’t clueless or critical; they make a real effort to connect with their son and understand his point of view, which Oscar notices and appreciates. The side characters, too, are well-drawn and contribute to the story.
Entertainingly amusing while also showing sensitivity to children’s complex emotional lives.Pub Date: March 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-976350-02-3
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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