A sweet, often poignant tale of survival that may spur interest in a magnificent species.
Inspired by the years he spent in Canada’s Kananaskis Provincial Park, Robson (The Prophecy, 2014, etc.) crafts an anthropomorphic story of a young grizzly named Shasta and her day-to-day struggles to raise her first litter of cubs.
Written in third-person with a focus on mother Shasta, this story of survival begins when her cubs—Kodiak (a strong male), Koda (a strong female), and Mato (a small, weak male)—are but a few days old. The tale continues into the cubs’ fourth year, when they will set out on their own. Shasta’s memories—such as her reasons for coupling with a majestic male named Ursus—are sprinkled throughout the narrative. Even though the bears are given human personalities, the book is intended for “a more mature nature enthusiast,” writes the author. Indeed, the attribution of human emotions to grizzlies makes the tone feel juvenile at times; for example, “Shasta smiled as she considered her choice of such a good den in which to give birth to her first cubs.” Nevertheless, Robson succeeds in realistically portraying the difficulties of grizzly survival—e.g., little Mato is attacked by an eagle—as well as the triumphs, as when Shasta manages to kill two elk for sustenance during a drought. Survival is paramount, and Shasta is determined to continue her bloodline. The narrative voice flows smoothly, and language is often poetic, as in a vivid description of Shasta’s smallest cub, Mato: “He would likely darken with time, but for now, his fur was the color of the tall blonde stalks of dry meadow grass that covered the ground after the snow melts and before the new green shoots emerged.” In fact, the adult vocabulary—shadows at dusk “had coalesced into the darkness of night”—is sometimes better suited for older teens and adults. A short discussion of basic grizzly behavior follows the story, as do footnotes, a nature glossary, and references for further reading.
A sweet, often poignant tale of survival that may spur interest in a magnificent species.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6955-8
Page Count: 126
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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