A well-imagined world with point-of-view jumps that make it hard to invest in the characters as complex individuals.
Looking ahead to their final year before graduation, four Latinx high school juniors deepen their friendship by altering their usual New Year’s Eve tradition.
The chapters are alternately named for Jess, Nora, Lee, and Ryan, teenagers whose families are part of the Latin American diaspora in Denver. The four engage in a witty ongoing group text chat. They worry about college admissions and whether they should attend at all. Collectively they lose a boyfriend, start new romances, mourn a relative, and argue with their parents. Trying to fulfill their resolutions, they run into a misunderstanding that tests their bonds. Diversity is the novel’s strength: Ryan and Nora, who runs a Puerto Rican restaurant with her mother, are gay. Some characters speak Spanish fluently, while others are trying to learn. Yet while culture is important to the story, the problems the friends encounter are universal. By splitting the story into four intersecting plotlines, García (Even If the Sky Falls, 2016) develops her characters with short strokes that preclude a great deal of depth, and their individual storylines become repetitive. The result is a slow-moving read that employs dramatic irony but doesn’t quite hit the mark with its more serious content.
A well-imagined world with point-of-view jumps that make it hard to invest in the characters as complex individuals. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265682-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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