An uneven novel that delivers compelling racing scenes but underdeveloped characters.
Mexis’ debut novel offers an ode to flat-track motorcycle racing.
Soon after Gunner Adams was born, he was abandoned by his father; he was raised by his alcoholic mother in Indiana until her death when he was 12. The Gunner that readers see for the majority of the novel is a troubled 23-year-old living in Santa Rosa, Calif., where he helps his uncle fix motorcycles. He’s also an especially talented flat-track motorcyclist, and the sections of the novel in which Gunner muses about racing, or actually races, have vivid imagery and expert insight. In this way, the novel’s subtitle—“A story about coming of age, love, and above all, racing”—sets up a hierarchy that proves to be accurate. However, the remainder of the story suffers from clichéd plot points and awkward dialogue. At an early race, for example, Gunner meets Joya, who works for the flat-track racing organization. Joya falls in love with him immediately, and, coincidentally, she happens to know Gunner’s runaway father. Before Joya and Gunner head to the biggest race of the year, the Indy Mile, she takes Gunner to meet him. The two men trade the requisite displays of anger and guilt before Gunner receives a helpful racing tip from his father—a former racer himself. When other conflicts arise, they primarily take place off the track. At one point, energy-drink guru and racing sponsor Tom Allen bribes Uncle Jim to sabotage a particular racer’s bike in a way that leads to his disqualification; later, he burns down Jim’s garage “for fun.” Unfortunately, Tom is so thinly drawn that his actions, and their relationship to Gunner, never feel very meaningful to readers. Later, when he becomes a factor at the Indy Mile, his presence feels strangely disconnected from the rest of the story.
An uneven novel that delivers compelling racing scenes but underdeveloped characters.Pub Date: April 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1922204417
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Vivid Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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