Suspenseful—but at best, loosely connected—elements rattle around in this capacious sequel to the equally patchwork Printer’s Devil (2005). Having reunited in the first episode and shaken (or so they suppose) their persecutors, twins Nick and Mog escape 1820s London to fetch up at run-down Kniveacres Hall—where new nemeses spring up in the form of Sir Septimus Cloy, their mother’s last living relative, and his equally hostile servant Hieronymous Bonefinger. Bajoria does have a way with names, but he shovels in so many enigmatic set pieces—not one, but two instances of falling stonework, for instance—and massive coincidences, along with characters who seem to appear and vanish at will, ghostly whispers, scary dreams, vague warnings of danger, heaped bones, corpses, riddles and such that not even a deliciously revolting chase scene through a slaughterhouse late in the tale compensates for the general lack of coherence. By the end, though Cloy and Bonefinger have been dispatched, and Mog and Nick may have found a home at last, the author leaves too much unexplained to create much sense of closure. (Fantasy. 12-15)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-01091-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
A girl’s interest in family history overlaps a coming-of-age story about her vestigial understanding of her mother after death, and her own awareness of self and place in the world. Junior high-school student Carrie Schmidt identifies strongly with the missing girls of 1967’s headlines about runaways. Carrie’s mother is dead and she has just moved in with her grandmother, Mutti, who embarrasses her with her foreign accent and ways. Carrie’s ideal is her friend Mona’s mother, a “professional” who dresses properly, smells good, and knows how to set out a table; readers will grasp the mother’s superficiality, even though Carrie, at first, does not. Mutti has terror in her past, and tells Carrie stories of the Jews in WWII Vienna, and of subsequent events in nine concentration camps; these are mined under the premise that Carrie needs stories for “dream” material and her interest in so-called lucid dreaming, a diverting backdrop that deepens the story without overwhelming it. Mutti’s gripping, terrible tales and the return of an old friend who raised Carrie’s mother when she was sent to Scotland at age nine awaken in Carrie a connection to her current family, to her ancestry, and, ultimately, to a stronger sense of self. This uncommon novel from Metzger (Ellen’s Case, 1995, etc.) steps out of the genre of historical fiction to tell a story as significant to contemporary readers as to the inhabitants of the era it evokes. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-87777-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
For a girl who is—by most standards—not perceived to be extraordinary, it is not easy living with a family of beautiful people. Jennifer Thayer both envies and resents her gourmet restaurateur/salad-dressing entrepreneur father, her industrial- psychologist mother who seems to care more about her work than about her younger daughter, and especially older sister Cass: lovely, talented, brainy, and preparing for marriage. Desperate for attention, Jennifer fakes an attempted rape, and at first, it works; for once in her life she is at center stage. Soon, however, the detective on the case figures out that something in the girl’s story isn’t right, and suspects that Jennifer’s mother has been abusing her. Caught up in the net of lies, Jennifer has to decide whether or not she can live with a growing sense of shame and guilt. Once again, Cadnum (Heat, 1998, etc.) has dissected the mind of one of society’s troubled young people, who has everything on the surface but is desperately trying to fill an unnamed emptiness. Deep, dark, and moving, this is a model tale of adolescent uneasiness set amid the roiling emotions of modern life. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88377-8
Page Count: 167
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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