A quirky and perceptive psychological tale with an unexpected, jolting twist at the end.
In this novel, a Canadian author battles to overcome agoraphobia and depression to complete his third book.
Jack is a sci-fi writer living in Penticton, British Columbia. He has produced two novels that have gained him a small but ardent fan base. It is five years since he completed his last book, which ended with its main character, Sage Sauer, being confined to a “stasis chamber.” Since then, Jack has suffered from writer’s block, causing him to obsess over one particular paragraph, which prevents him from crafting more. His agoraphobia and depression have also steadily intensified, meaning that he divides his time among his home, where he lives with his best friend, Shelly; his psychiatrist’s office; and a local coffee shop, the Green Beans Café. Although he’s frightened of attempting anything more ambitious than a short walk from his apartment, his doctor has been preparing him for an unthinkable journey across town to his sister’s house, located on the West Valley Wall. The novel tracks Jack’s odyssey, from the moment Shelly tosses him over her shoulder and bundles him into their Mustang to the life-altering events that occur after he watches his 12-year-old niece, Tessa, for his sister. Lloyd (Burning the Last Bridge, 2017) understands the debilitating restrictions and negative mind chatter faced by agoraphobics to the extent that he captures their essence in one simple passage. Jack confesses to Shelly: “I just feel like avoiding everything in life because life stresses me out. I want to hide and not deal with it.” The author is also able to pinpoint the irrational but terrifyingly real feelings that escalate anxiety into a panic attack: “I just feel unsafe, and I don’t know why. I know these surroundings; I grew up around them. It’s not a new environment….It just doesn’t make any sense, and it’s probably not supposed to.” Nevertheless, the message of the stirring story is positive. Despite their chilling nature, Jack addresses his fears head on and begins to reap the benefits—psychologically, socially, and in terms of his literary output. This is an intuitively written book that should beguile most readers, particularly those who have had similar mental health experiences.
A quirky and perceptive psychological tale with an unexpected, jolting twist at the end.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Tellwell
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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