by Lauren Eckhardt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2015
A light, fast read that provides equal measures of quirky fun and heavy-handed allegory, though it struggles to transport...
Eckhardt (The Remedy Files: Illusion, 2014) creates colorful worlds, from bleak to bright, in this surreal, slightly hallucinatory novella about an abducted woman, possibly magical fireflies, and an enigmatic spiritual guide.
Evaline watches a firefly splatter on the windshield of her car as it crashes. Then she wakes up in a strange world of darkness. The first person—entity, really—she meets there is the Sun. When asked what she was searching for, Evaline says, “a place I feel safe and happy…a real home.” Agreeing to help her, the Sun transports her to a series of different worlds. The first is Nogmestead, an idyllic country town that conceals a malicious totalitarian edge. Just as Evaline finds friends in local mediator Namaste Majie and librarian Bookend Rasha, she is forced to flee and wakes up in another realm, the land up in the sky. There, she meets FeFe, the woman who paints the sky, and learns the secret power of imagination that will allow Evaline to do the same. The next time Evaline sleeps, she wakes in the sea of fishes, where she finds something that just might one day lead her to her one true love. Finally, the Sun appears to Evaline again and she must make a choice: where will she call home and, more importantly, who will she be? Evaline’s story is a short one filled with colorful allegory, unique characters, and solid, sometimes-pretty prose. The episodes that make up the main thrust of the plot are relatively simple, leaving much to be desired in terms of a thoughtful, challenging allegory. Evaline’s journey isn’t terribly surprising or philosophical, either. The surreal, beautifully described opening is one of the book’s strongest moments. Unfortunately, the subsequent magical lands don’t reach that initial spark.
A light, fast read that provides equal measures of quirky fun and heavy-handed allegory, though it struggles to transport readers as easily as it shuffles around its main character.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1505870343
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 10, 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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