A well-crafted university story that speaks to the human spirit.
In this novel, a veteran teacher faces ethical boundaries as she invests in the academic and personal lives of her students.
Jane Frost has been teaching in the English as a Second Language program at McBee University in Iowa for more than 20 years. This tale primarily examines the triumphs and struggles of the international students enrolled in Jane’s ESL Low Intermediate Grammar/Writing class. Jane goes above and beyond to teach her students the intricacies of English so they can pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language exam in order to move on and enroll in American universities. She encourages her students of varying ages and cultural backgrounds to come together and find rapport. In particular, Jane takes an interest in her two Japanese students for very different reasons: Chika Yamamoto, an uninterested young woman with flunking grades, and 60-something Yumi Murata, an affable, hardworking woman and stellar student with some secrets of her own. When the usually gleeful Yumi begins withdrawing and her grades start to slip, Jane tussles with getting involved; in the past, she has been chastised by Kaye Bibber, the program director, for her liberal boundaries when it comes to the affairs of her students. Additionally, Jane is challenged by her new mentee, first-year teacher Donna Bittner, whose provocative clothing and odd, lackadaisical teaching style rattle McBee’s ESL department. In this finely constructed novel, Kasten (Wildwood, 2013, etc.) deftly focuses on Jane’s lessons, including teachings and conversations in class about dialogue, diction, grammar, and idioms of American vernacular. But the “twist” at the end of the tale is abrupt; a more thorough explanation would have been helpful. Jane is a strong character but she would have benefited from a more in-depth back story. Although there are a few anecdotes about her childhood memories and brief mentions of siblings, Jane also fleetingly alludes to her raucous time in the 1960s and her early adulthood “living communally and holding up hostile signs in front of certain corporate headquarters and military installations.” Fully explored, this would have added a nice layer to the narrative.
A well-crafted university story that speaks to the human spirit.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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