Familiar roots and accessible themes make this strong collection a good introduction to Lanagan’s mind-bending work.
Lanagan unravels familiar myths and fairy tales, weaving them into unique, sharply resonant forms in this characteristically stunning collection.
Reading Lanagan, like learning a language by total immersion, involves a leap of faith. Each tale conjures a world with unique laws and lawbreakers. Rather than being coddled by comforting dollops of exposition, readers dive into the murky unknown. Spellbound, they reach the end, astonished at how far from shore they’ve traveled. The most powerful of these tales reworks Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Tinderbox,” drawing on its creepy, amoral ambiance to explore the spoils and costs of war. “Rapunzel” morphs into a sunnier tale but with an eldritch feel. Supported by his loving wife and apprentice-daughter, Charon ferries dead souls across the Styx. However strange the details (a sentient building lumbers into the sea; a fascinator plies his trade), the stories rest on bedrock human emotions. Characters act out of fear, anger, love—to stop the pain, to make sense of the senseless, to protect family. The shipbreaking underclass who take apart horrifying vessels are decent folk at heart. In a tale exploring the paradoxical complexities of loss, a mother floats away from the family desperate to keep her. Traveling such elusive terrain requires an oblique approach, and Lanagan, like Emily Dickinson, tells it “slant.”
Familiar roots and accessible themes make this strong collection a good introduction to Lanagan’s mind-bending work. (author’s note) (Fantasy/short stories. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-86920-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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