by Karen Dalin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 2014
Charming, uplifting tale about immortality and interconnectedness in the universe.
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In this spirituality focused fiction, Rachel Levinson, killed in a car accident, initially isolates herself, then learns with the help of a little girl about the karmic cycle of life.
After arriving Here, Rachel asks for a home in an area without children due to the grief and rage she feels having lost her daughter, Carolyn, and husband, Rick, as well as the potential joys of grandparenthood. Eventually, when she longs to hear children’s voices again, the “powers-that-be” have children walk by her window. It is soon revealed that Rachel was killed in a car accident, the result of her distraction and anger over Rick’s not heeding her psychic warning that the plane he was to use for a business trip would crash. Ironically, Rachel’s death meant Rick avoided that trip, and someone else also spotted and corrected the plane’s malfunction. Rachel has one living child, Carolyn, but a son died soon after birth. With the help of Betty, a woman who encourages her to attend Here support events, and, more significantly, with the help of a young girl called Hattie, Rachel comes to realize that she has sought too much control in life and should be more tolerant about how the universe unfolds. She gets visits from others in Here—deceased relatives, a childhood lesbian friend, a beloved pet cat—and learns about their other lives and connections to her throughout her life. By story’s end, another recent Here arrival is reborn into the There world to Carolyn. Rick, who can see beyond There, is pleased to spot Rachel in the room with the family at the child’s birth. Debut novelist Dalin’s slim yet powerful tale offers a joyous worldview and effective depictions of Here and There to dramatize a never-ending circle of life. Discussion of characters’ reincarnations can get dizzying at times, and Rachel’s relationship with Rick, even in her journal entries, remains a bit murky. Overall, however, Dalin provides a positive, hopeful message and plenty of food for spiritual thought.
Charming, uplifting tale about immortality and interconnectedness in the universe.Pub Date: April 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1457519864
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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