Both poignant and hopeful, a beautifully calibrated coming-of-age tale that deals thoughtfully with grief and recovery.
In this debut middle-grade novel, a girl learns at summer camp that she has an unusual ability, which may help in hunting for her brother.
On the way to Camp Glynwood for the summer, Celia Johnson, 11, is already working out the details of how she’ll return to Brooklyn. She has no intention of enjoying four weeks in the woods while her younger brother, Kyel, is missing. True, camp isn’t as bad as she feared; the girls come in every complexion, including her own “dark hot chocolate” shade, and the place feels “loved and worn…like her favorite Brooklyn Dodgers sweatshirt,” once Kyel’s. She even makes tentative friends with a quirky blond girl, Violet, whose father has died. Nevertheless, on her first night, Celia escapes, but crash-lands her borrowed bicycle in the woods, where she makes an incredible discovery: She can talk to animals. Some of them think they can help with Celia’s search, but she must stay at camp and arrange to visit the Snapping Turtle King. He has a certain gift that could aid Celia, but has been driven insane by grief, blaming another long-ago “Speaker” for the death of his wife. Celia, meanwhile, must face an important truth and several difficulties before she can carry out some crucial tasks—with unexpected assistance from several camp figures—and restore the balance of several lives. In her novel, Hales writes with sensitivity about loss, using well-honed images. Violet’s laugh, for example, “made Celia think of a flash of tinsel catching the sunlight from a grey, winter sidewalk. There was a sharp crispness wrapped in sadness that Celia understood.” Animals and people are deftly characterized, and the author does a nice job of capturing the atmosphere of a good summer camp: its activities, traditions, in-jokes, and sensory feel. Celia’s psychological growth from denial to acceptance of loss is artfully and realistically handled, despite the book’s fantasy aspects, which work well as a kind of drama taking place in a symbolic landscape.
Both poignant and hopeful, a beautifully calibrated coming-of-age tale that deals thoughtfully with grief and recovery.Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73304-940-5
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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