A thoroughly engrossing story with a young protagonist offering insight instead of woe.
A debut drama follows a biracial girl and her family, who endure poverty and racism in mid-1980s Hawaii.
Nine-year-old Amanda Nakamura lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Mililani with her mom, Mehana, and two sisters, Wendy, 12, and Stephanie, 5. The girls rarely see their Japanese father, Gordon, whose idea of child support is a meager $60 a month. Determined to get herself and her daughters off welfare, Mehana goes to school full-time while holding a part-time job. Her parents and sisters offer little help, Mehana’s divorce having essentially made her the outcast of her Roman Catholic family. Food’s scarcely in the fridge, but Amanda and her siblings also must contend with “uncles,” their mom’s series of generally appalling boyfriends, like Dick Richards, who gets too touchy-feely with Amanda. Amanda’s left out as the middle child, sure that Stephanie is her mom’s favorite and Wendy her dad’s. Searching for an identity, she’s a Hawaiian raised within Mehana’s family but suffering the ignorance of racial slur-spewing peers who believe she’s Japanese or black. She’s even mocked by the daughters of Mehana’s boyfriend Chuck, calling her a haole (foreigner, often referring to white people) because she can’t speak their pidgin tongue. Mehana will graduate and hopefully secure a better job, and Amanda and her sisters can leave behind their lowly existence. The tale of a girl not fitting in anywhere isn’t as cheerless as it sounds, thanks to its protagonist. Amanda can take a punch, sometimes literally, without demanding sympathy. This comes across not just in her behavior—resigned to the fact she can’t have anything nice after Wendy destroys a Christmas gift—but in her narration as well, relaying events in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. Condescending Aunty Aloha, for example, serves as comic relief, telling Amanda and her siblings to “shake it out” to avoid getting cockroaches in her new minivan. Lee skillfully handles key issues, including insults based on race or social standing derived not only from hatred, but also unfamiliarity and misunderstanding. Adults, however, are occasionally exaggerated, implausibly so; a teacher, irate with Amanda’s complaints about repeatedly watching the Challenger explosion, shows her class a stomach-turning video involving baby seals.
A thoroughly engrossing story with a young protagonist offering insight instead of woe.Pub Date: June 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-615-83661-4
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Makalii Productions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2016
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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