Banks’s story has the slightly detached modern—and adult—sensibility of a New Yorker short story: The relationships of a group of vacationing friends and a loving, multigenerational family in Italy are described in both warm sensory waves and with a colder, steady current of psychological analysis. Thirteen-year-old, Rome-born Lucrezia, the keen-eyed narrator, and the half-American, half-Italian Ollie are “friends of the heart,” childhood friends who, however different, are inextricably bound. A sensual landscape of a teenage summer on an Italian beach is painted here—a mélange of Ping-Pong, flip-flops, sparkling water, slippery brown bodies, light touches, meaningful looks. The magical spell is broken before the story begins, however, as Lucrezia hints at “the summer that shouldn’t have been.” Until the bitter and shocking end, readers sit as if next to a pin-threatened balloon, cringing at every boat ride, neighborhood intrigue or character’s false move, braced for whatever horror is due to unfold. Life, death, love, friendship, superstition, self-discovery and more are examined in this sometimes belabored, sometimes joyful, ultimately tragic story. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-32455-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
Decades after the events of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009), teenager Gabry lives in relative safety. Despite the Barrier keeping the ravaging zombies out of town, Gabry is a terrified homebody who wants only to stay sheltered with her mother, the refugee heroine of Forest. Her nervousness is justified; when Gabry is peer-pressured into sneaking past the Barrier for a night of adolescent rebellion, several of her friends are zombified. (One wonders, if teens sneaking out for a snog is so dangerous to society, how there any humans left at all.) The ensuing chaos sends Gabry into the wilderness where, encumbered by revelations about love and family, she encounters zombie-worshiping cultists, the dangerous remnants of the army and her own past. Whatever comes between Gabry and her mother, there’s one thing they definitely have in common: Like her mother, Gabry experiences an angst-ridden, gloomy love triangle while fleeing from zombie hordes in the forest’s depths. Fast-paced despite the mawkish romance, it will be gobbled up by fans of the first volume like brains. (Horror. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 9, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-385-73684-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
This story presents an alien invasion from two unique viewpoints. Megs is 12, trapped alone in the parking garage of a Los Angeles hotel, forced to scrounge for food and water while avoiding alien spaceships outside and security guards who have taken over the hotel with vicious disregard for the safety of their “guests” inside. Josh is about to turn 16, trapped in his house in Washington state with his father and dog, watching their world being slowly but surely destroyed, day after day, from his living-room window. Both have to deal with supplies that shrink with every rationed meal. No phones, no radio or television, no electricity and no ability to step out of shelter without being “deleted”—this is a new world that only the truly brave can exist in. Written in short chapters that alternate between Megs and Josh, this masterful debut grabs readers by the throat from the first page and never lets go. It is clear at the end that there’s a lot more story to tell, and one can only hope that a sequel is not far behind. (Science fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60898-011-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Namelos
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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