An uplifting, if uneven, novel about strengthening family bonds.
In Wainland's (Rock Radio, 2013) novel, a journalist faces a medical emergency with her family by her side—including, unexpectedly, her runaway sister.
Twenty-nine-year-old Cassie works at a small New York City newspaper, where's she's been overlooked for a promotion. She also suffers from headaches and fatigue, which she blames on stress. Despite these troubles, she's happily engaged to Jake, a fellow Long Islander-turned-Manhattanite. They both experienced heartbreak when they were younger, but of very different kinds. When Cassie was 12, her older sister, Sandy, ran away from home to move to California with her boyfriend. Cassie felt responsible for the tensions between her sister and her parents, but she also felt abandoned by her sister. Jake's guilt goes much deeper: at 14, he and his friend distracted his mother as she drove them home on an icy day, causing an accident. Jake still feels responsible for his mother's death, and he's never told his father (or Cassie) the truth about the accident. Cassie finds out that her tiredness and headaches are actually due to a brain tumor; she needs emergency surgery, and Jake is devastated. The tragic news brings Sandy back to the East Coast for the first time since she was 18. Secrets, guilt, and emotional pain must all be put aside, in order to see Cassie through her difficult time. Wainland effectively captures the terror of a medical crisis, including the horrible waiting game of tests and recovery. However, she only scratches the surface of Jake and Cassie's relationship and their shared experiences of guilt and abandonment. They never confide in each other, as Cassie even mentions: "If he knew about my crazy eccentricities, he might opt to hop back onto the single train, so I just keep those little pieces of information to myself." As a result, there's a lot of ripe material here, but the author doesn't dramatize enough of it. The most compelling scenes involve past actions, such as Sandy leaving home and Jake's mother dying; the hospital scenes, however, are the least engaging. That said, Wainland provides an inspirational story, and it's a pleasant read overall.
An uplifting, if uneven, novel about strengthening family bonds.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692319963
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Twin Tree Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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