More cathartic than captivating, a thoughtful piece about birth, death and everything in between.
Jess Walton witnesses life, death and seemingly magical events in this slow-moving novel that’s light on plot but heavy with philosophy.
After her great-aunt Edie dies, Jess inherits a bureau full of secrets. Though Jess had hoped for Edie’s piano so she could lose herself in music, when she discovers a glass flask hidden in the bureau, she takes it as an omen for her new baby brothers’ birth. Clem and Richie are conjoined twins, and Jess believes that the flask holds a spirit that will allow her to control the boys’ fates. With her mother and stepfather at the hospital, her grandmother mourning Edie’s death and her irritatingly exuberant friend Zoe preoccupied by a boy, Jess drifts through the stages of grief—both for Edie and, prematurely, for her newborn brothers. Jess’ behavior and experiences vacillate between magical realism and delusion, leaving the nature of the flask up to readers to determine. Just as Jess seeks meaning in coincidences, the novel strains to connect an intimate and specific situation with grand meditations on life, death, friendship and divine power. Rather than exploiting the conjoined twins for shock value, Singer goes to the opposite extreme, making them miraculous symbols of the interconnectedness of life.
More cathartic than captivating, a thoughtful piece about birth, death and everything in between. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4521-0921-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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