Solid character development strengthens a familiar plot.
In a future Chicago, when bionic chips have turned some humans into zombielike creatures, a young woman fights her way to possible sanctuary.
Some 70 years from now, widening social inequality has divided those living in the States (what’s left of America after California secedes) between those who qualify for MINK health coverage and those who don’t—such as Tasha Lockett, college dropout and salesgirl for a high-end mall’s designer pet store. Without MINK, she can’t get a Chip, the tiny neck-implanted device that prevents and cures all ailments. But then comes the Change: One morning, everyone with a chip is suddenly transformed into a swaying, grunting, zombielike eater of human flesh. The Minkers, as Tasha calls them, are easy enough to kill—she dispatches her doorman with a nail file—but they’re everywhere. A scribbled note from Tasha’s sister in California, postmarked two weeks before the Change, reads “Get to South Side ASAP….Dr. Rio can help. Find him. Come to LA.” Armed with a kitchen knife and toting her Prada backpack, Tasha makes a dangerous journey through Minker-haunted Chicago. When she learns Rio’s full plans, she realizes the battle is only just beginning. In the crowded field of dystopian/post-apocalyptic/zombie fiction, Cole doesn’t add much that’s new besides an interesting social-justice angle: Unusually for the genre, Tasha is of mixed race; Minkers tend to be white. Cole impressively plots Tasha’s growth: At first, she’s obsessed with fashion and style—at one point, she leaves a potential ally unprotected so she can do her makeup—but as life-and-death situations force her to reconsider priorities, Tasha can no longer answer a question such as “What’s so special about Prada?” except to conclude that “it was something to love, I guess.” Cole makes excellent use of her Chicago setting, and she brings out the spookiness of her premise with haunting images of ordinary people gone mindlessly bad. Despite a lot of action, though, the book moves somewhat slowly while leaving many questions unanswered, no doubt due to a planned sequel.
Solid character development strengthens a familiar plot.Pub Date: March 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991615506
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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