A quick, delightful tale for canine lovers who can never get enough dog stories.
An irrepressible toy Australian shepherd discusses her human Momma as she chronicles the first two years of their life together in this debut book.
If you have ever wished you could hear what your loving, furry companion really thinks of you, Lina (“pronounced with a long i”) is here to dish the dirt from a canine perspective. Born in Florida and adopted when she was a few weeks old, Lina decided early on that her experiences with Momma were so “fur-raising” that she simply had to blog about them. This journal by Little Big Ears (a.k.a. Lina) is adapted from LinasDogBlog. Much to Lina’s consternation, she learned that her time would be divided between living “on one of the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida” and in Minnesota—the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Lina hates water. And Minnesota is really cold. There are some other issues. Momma gets easily confused, distracted, or otherwise frazzled. She travels frequently and plays a lot of golf. And she is a staunch Republican. Lina, on the other hand, worries about being deported by President Donald Trump because of her “Australian” heritage. Fortunately, Lina has Nanny Becky and others to pick up the slack when things get too tough for Momma to handle. Add in a bevy of playful canine friends in the North and South and Lina, in between the numerous runs to one veterinarian or another and Momma’s embarrassing behavior, is a very happy camper. Despite crossing the red line on the cuteness meter, this little romp of a read is often quite funny, filled with near disasters many pet parents will recognize. After just a few pages, it will be easy enough for readers to suspend all disbelief and enjoy the world according to Lina. Here is her cynical take on Momma’s willingness to dispense “ ‘calming aid’ treats” to deal with thunderstorm anxiety: Nanny should have realized “that Momma would use them to drug me whenever she wanted a little free time. And…I’m pretty sure the aids do not all trickle down to me.” The accompanying family photographs are adorable. Want more? A sequel is in the works.
A quick, delightful tale for canine lovers who can never get enough dog stories.Pub Date: July 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59298-823-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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