An engaging fantasy story about letting go of the past and learning to love oneself.
Three young women, shaken by mysterious episodes in which they transcend time and space, forge an unlikely friendship in Wolfe’s charming debut novel.
It’s the fall semester at Boulder, Colorado’s Stone College for juniors Jessie, Sara, and Isabel, but midterm exams are the least of these girls’ worries. For each girl, what started as a few unsettling sensations—such as hearing music when none was playing or inexplicably smelling salt water—becomes something far more intense. It turns out that each co-ed has access to a hidden world. Their experiences, which seem like premonitions, aren’t always pleasant: Jessie becomes trapped inside a maze; Isabel finds herself marooned in a seaside cave; and chains “slither up” Sara’s arms and legs. As pressures at home and school begin to mount, the girls escape to California for what’s supposed to be a fun-filled getaway. However, their baffling out-of-body incidents continue. During a visit to Hearst Castle, Jessie, Sara, and Isabel are drawn toward a marble statue depicting the goddesses Brilliance, Joy, and Bloom. Can the connections they establish with the deities help them conquer their fears and put an end to their otherworldly excursions? Or has it just brought them closer to the forces they hope to escape? Although several supernatural elements skirt around the plot’s edges, the focus of this tale is on friendship. Jessie, Sara, and Isabel find one another at a critical point, as each woman questions herself and her future. Although the strange places in which they find themselves can be unsettling, it’s a credit to Wolfe that the most memorable passages are set in the real world. One such scene comes early in the novel as Isabel, who struggles to connect with her parents, watches her mother loosen her father’s boots after the old man has fallen asleep in his recliner: “It was only in moments like this, just glimpses really, when she felt anything for them,” Wolfe writes. “And how horrible was that?” Other epiphanies reveal themselves just as quietly, making for an unexpectedly tender—and honest—coming-of-age tale.
An engaging fantasy story about letting go of the past and learning to love oneself.Pub Date: June 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-941668-02-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Then Three Graces
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
