A young journeyman stonecutter becomes entangled in a web of emotions he cannot begin to navigate when he accepts a job from a mysterious man in this rather pointless gothic meditation set in 1835. Fourteen-year-old Albion Straight has reservations when a stranger’s agent approaches him to carve a monument, but lured by both the fee offered and the opportunity to make his professional name, he agrees. Hidden in the undeveloped wilderness of western New York’s Genesee River Valley, John Good’s mansion-in-the-making has attached to it a company of workers who seem to labor as virtual slaves to the autocratic Good. It turns out that Albion has been brought to Goodspell to carve a tomb for Good’s wife, 15 years dead, in a natural limestone cave that gives Albion the willies. Moreover, he is expected to use as model Good’s daughter Michal, who is the very image of her mother and whose birth precipitated her mother’s death. Told in the form of Albion’s diary entries, the narrative takes on the labored cadence of swollen Victorian language: “The strange illumination made them both ghastly, red-faced, and quaking in the lantern’s light. Tho they’d ceased speaking, it seemed that the echoes of their quarrel still flitted like bats around the great chamber. A crazed light shone in Michal’s eyes.” The relationship Albion glimpses between Good and Michal is indeed disturbing, but frustratingly, it is not explored enough within the narrative to make it other than vaguely creepy. Although both Michal’s and Albion’s distress at their powerlessness in the face of Good’s obsession is obvious to the reader, the climax and dénouement that result seem hastily thrown-together after the many pages of careful exposition that has gone before. In the end, there’s lots of atmosphere, but little story here. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-16474-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
This profoundly moving story is all the more impressive because of its basis in fact. Although the story is fictionalized, its most harrowing aspects are true: “Today, more than two hundred million children between the ages of five and seventeen are ‘economically active’ in the world.” Iqbal Masih, a real boy, was murdered at age 13. His killers have never been found, but it’s believed that a cartel of ruthless people overseeing the carpet industry, the “Carpet Mafia,” killed him. The carpet business in Pakistan is the backdrop for the story of a young Pakistani girl in indentured servitude to a factory owner, who also “owned” the bonds of 14 children, indentured by their own families for sorely needed money. Fatima’s first-person narrative grips from the beginning and inspires with every increment of pride and resistance the defiant Iqbal instills in his fellow workers. Although he was murdered for his efforts, Iqbal’s life was not in vain; the accounts here of children who were liberated through his and activist adults’ efforts will move readers for years to come. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85445-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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