When their grandmother disappears in Warsaw, two sisters follow her trail around Eastern Europe in this debut literary novel.
Is it really a good idea for a 91-year-old woman to travel from the United States to Warsaw by herself? Vira Bilyk’s 30-something granddaughter, Larissa, is doubtful, but her baba has always been strong-willed and is determined to make the trip to the International Folkdance exhibition on her own. Vira will be staying with Panya Stefa, an old friend of Larissa’s mother. After the flight, Stefa calls to say that Vira never showed up either at her apartment or the dance exhibition. Trying not to panic, Larissa and her younger sister, Irena, called Ira, jump on a plane for Warsaw. There, they follow—in a kind of anxiety dream journey—what seems to be a breadcrumb trail to Slovakia and Hungary, locations where Vira sought refuge in World War II after having to leave her home in Galicia in western Ukraine. Flashbacks from Vira’s viewpoint set in 1941 and ’42 illustrate her wrenching losses and the wily courage that helped her survive. The ending, where all these paths meet, brings several kinds of reconciliation. In her novel, Spisak lyrically interweaves elements from Ukrainian culture, such as traditional dance, matryoshka nesting dolls, and tales. Each motif illuminates Vira’s character, as with the dolls hidden within one another, speaking to her lifesaving abilities in disguise, deceit, and concealment. Of particular significance is Baba Yaga, a usually fearsome fairy-tale witch who, Ira argues, is “fierce but not always bad.” The witch helps those who are strong and brave like Vira, whose ferocious strength comes to her own rescue.
A complex, poetic tale, strongly linking past and present through folk art’s rich traditions.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-954332-31-7
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
84
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
With the United States the “closest [it’s] been to war” in a lifetime, intelligence operative Jack Ryan Jr. faces stiff odds in trying to avert disaster with China.
Trouble with China begins brewing (yet again in the Clancy books) with the rendition of a Chinese scientist and the killing of his American brother, a specialist in machine learning. With a sniper attack on the German outpost of The Campus, Ryan’s “off-the-books” agency, and the downing of an American plane over the South China Sea, U.S. efforts to recover a Chinese undersea glider capable of detecting a $3 billion American stealth submarine are in jeopardy. Things look especially grim with the capture of crash survivor John Clark, Ryan’s boss and a close compadre of his father, President Jack Ryan Sr. With Ryan Sr. still shaken by the abduction of his wife a year ago and Ryan Jr. doubtful of his abilities as a team leader, it's up to intelligence director Mary Pat Foley to calm the waters with her expertise and strong will. One possible outcome is a Chinese attack on Taiwan. In Bentley’s third outing in the series, it takes a while to get past cookie cutter stuff: Many pages go by before the reader knows what all the tense language, chase scenes, and international travel are about. But the book's cool, checkerboard efficiency eventually takes hold. And the streaks of vulnerability that run through the Ryans impart a human dimension that most such thrillers lack. Bentley also takes pains to distinguish the novel from fake fiction: “Unlike in the movies, getting struck by a rifle round moving at several thousand feet per second was not insignificant.”
A well-turned, if predictable, installment in the popular series.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422786
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Categories: SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | POLITICAL, MILITARY & TERRORISM
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