An overlong first act that doesn’t quite live up to its epic ambitions.
Gonzalez’s debut novel, the first in a planned series, follows an idealistic young Cuban woman whose fate may change the course of human history.
Nineteen-year-old Clara thinks she’s witnessing a miracle. It is 1994 in Cuba, and after four years of food shortages, blackouts and rampant unemployment, the people are rebelling against Fidel Castro. Cubans are fleeing the island in improvised boats, and Castro’s blue-uniformed police seem powerless to stop them. For Clara, her husband, Rigo, and their friends, this historic moment represents a shot at freedom and intellectual fulfillment in the United States. But when an otherworldly messenger visits Clara on the eve of their exodus, she decides to sacrifice the life she has always dreamed of in order to serve a much higher calling. Gonzalez is a strong, sometimes-idiosyncratic prose stylist particularly adept at capturing the clash of idealism and futility that marks this period of Cuba’s history. However, his habit of returning time and again to the same details—Clara’s anxious state of mind, her ruminations on the landscape, the omnipresent police—often brings the story to a standstill when the stakes are at their highest. The tension is further dissipated by a sudden shift to the heavens, where a comic disagreement between an imperious Creator and a rebellious Son of Man underscores the political strife on Earth but does little else to advance the novel’s plot. These flaws work against Gonzalez’s considerable storytelling prowess, which he most fully realizes in a chapter devoted to the back stories of Rigo and Clara’s father. Here, flashbacks allow the story to move along while capturing the heartbreak of intellectual yearning snuffed out by an oppressive bureaucratic regime. Unfortunately, the rest of Clara’s lengthy narrative struggles to get anywhere fast. Readers who stick it out until the end are likely to feel betrayed by the story’s lack of resolution.
An overlong first act that doesn’t quite live up to its epic ambitions.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1477492017
Page Count: 562
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
