Bedard (Painted Devil, 1994, etc.) returns again to the Canadian town of Caledon for an understated foray into magical realism. Fourteen-year-old Charles is quiet and introspective, with the deliberate fragility of not-quite-healed. In a rundown church, Charles witnesses an accident that shatters one of the ancient stained-glass windows, and discovers a homeless teenage girl bleeding in a pew, apparently a victim of amnesia. This small incident engenders his obsession with helping the strange girl find her way home. Their surreal journey through the town triggers Charles’s cascading memories of his childhood. Meanwhile, the church’s caretaker works frenetically to piece together the shards of the broken window, accompanied by memories of his own past. Although the sources of Charles’s own wounds are eventually revealed, and the girl’s mysterious origins strongly suggested, there is very little story here. Instead, there is a series of finely etched observations and lapidary musings on the nature of memories, how fragments of the past persist to make up the pattern of our individual selves. Bedard’s language is evocative and poetic, rich in metaphor and symbol. Events unfold with a dream-like logic, as the miraculous is made matter-of-fact, while ordinary objects take on outsized significance. Not for everyone, or even for most, but a small gem awaiting the special reader. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-88776-552-1
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A terrific premise buried beneath problem-novel tropes.
A gaggle of eighth graders find the coolest clubhouse ever.
Fulfilling the fantasies of anyone who’s ever constructed a fort in their bedroom or elsewhere, Korman hands his five middle schoolers a fully stocked bomb shelter constructed decades ago in the local woods by an eccentric tycoon and lost until a hurricane exposes the entrance. So, how to keep the hideout secret from interfering grown-ups—and, more particularly, from scary teen psychopath Jaeger Devlin? The challenge is tougher still when everyone in the central cast is saddled with something: C.J. struggles to hide injuries inflicted by the unstable stepdad his likewise abused mother persists in enabling; Jason is both caught in the middle of a vicious divorce and unable to stand up to his controlling girlfriend; Evan is not only abandoned by drug-abusing parents, but sees his big brother going to the bad thanks to Jaeger’s influence; Mitchell struggles with OCD–fueled anxieties and superstitions; and so forth. How to keep a story overtaxed with issues and conflicts from turning into a dreary slog? Spoiler alert: Neither the author nor his characters ultimately prove equal to the challenge. With the possible exception of Ricky Molina, one of the multiple narrators, everyone seems to be White.
A terrific premise buried beneath problem-novel tropes. (resources, author’s note) (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-62914-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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