by Lee Vranna ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 19, 2014
A whimsical tale with plenty of zaniness that revolves around a sentimental and philosophical core.
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A debut novel follows a teenager and his curious involvement with celestial beings.
Josh, a lover of marijuana, disc golf, and Internet pornography, seems an unlikely guy to be recruited for anything, let alone an important mission from the gods. This is, however, exactly what happens. With a need for a mortal to hide the “Secret Knowledge picked from the Tree of Life,” Thoth, the “divine librarian and scribe of the gods,” feels he has found his man. As Thoth explains in a committee meeting that includes Athena and Eshu, “Our goal is to find the individual on Earth who is LEAST likely to benefit from possessing the Secrets; I think we have succeeded.” Persuading the high school student to accept the task, which involves holding a number of CDs that contain “all of the world’s secret knowledge” in exchange for “the best ganja bud you can imagine,” proves to be no challenge at all. Josh has other concerns. He hates school (“It’s not that he wasn’t smart, but the material they tried to teach him was wretchedly boring”). And as his dementia-suffering grandfather comes to stay with the family, Josh can only escape to his favorite distractions for so long. Problems arise, however, when Thoth decides he likes to hang out with the boy and Josh develops an interest in learning about the knowledge he protects. If the idea of an ancient Egyptian deity befriending a high school slacker sounds silly, that’s because it is. Free-wheeling throughout, the narrative nevertheless tackles serious topics in an unapologetically playful manner. Discussing enlightenment, Thoth explains that “One of the incontrovertible truths is that nature abhors a vacuum, and the most abhorrent vacuum of all is an empty cranium.” The lesson occurs while he and Josh are settled in for an evening of video games. Though the description of Dionysus as a “snot-licking drunk” may not be humorous to all readers, the comedy is a vehicle for the characters to build relationships, which in the end manage to be touching. Everyone needs a friend; so what if Josh’s happens to have the head of a bird and comes bearing “unbelievable” weed?
A whimsical tale with plenty of zaniness that revolves around a sentimental and philosophical core.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62901-079-3
Page Count: 126
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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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