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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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