A breezy book with a positive message for those who tend to think of themselves as helplessly ordinary.
Vohra’s (Explore Your Potential, 2011) novel follows one young man’s journey from average to extraordinary.
Sudesh Kapoor is awaiting the results of his XII grade exam—results he’s not too excited about receiving: “It was not that he had fared badly in any subject but he knew he was average and his score would also be average.” Finding that his results are a measly 69 percent, Sudesh expects a major argument with his parents. He’s surprised when they instead offer to send him to a monastery for a year, an experience both his father and grandfather had gone through. “I felt completely smashed, my own grandpa and dad were monks for one year and I didn’t know,” he says. Though the monastery offers “no cable TV, no friends and worst of all no girls to speak to,” Sudesh agrees to go, opening himself to a novel experience. Charged with repeating a mantra a million times over the course of his stay, Sudesh sets about his task even though he’s unsure about the potential benefits. Will his time in the monastery be for naught when he returns to the real world? How will he succeed in his professional life, particularly when prospective employers eye his less-than-spectacular exam scores? The answers come quickly in this short read. Pursuing a career in the stock market and eventually an MBA, Sudesh finds himself uniquely prepared to deal with the ups and downs of such endeavors. Sudesh tells readers that keeping an open mind is key, as when handling the turbulent stock market: “I knew if I kept an open mind and didn’t get carried away I would recognize the reversal of the trend.” Though the details of Sudesh’s work life aren’t terribly gripping, the narrative moves at a rapid clip, providing an experience as unique as Sudesh’s time with monks.
A breezy book with a positive message for those who tend to think of themselves as helplessly ordinary.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-93-815889-5-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: V&S Publishers
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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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