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 child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999). Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying—and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover. Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm; a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs; and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee. Though she lives halfway around the world and is in reality a decidedly unadventurous urbanite, Alex, short for “Alexandra,” sets off to the rescue, arriving in the midst of another storm that requires Nim and companions to rescue her. Once Jack brings his battered boat limping home, the stage is set for sunny days again. Plenty of comic, freely-sketched line drawings help to keep the tone light, and Nim, with her unusual associates and just-right mix of self-reliance and vulnerability, makes a character young readers won’t soon tire of. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-81123-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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
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