A fantastical and satisfying romp near the Rio Grande.
A debut graphic novel focuses on a zany family adventure in the American Southwest.
The Meyer brothers take readers to New Mexico in 1949. A mischievous boy named Carlos Lucero loves teasing a local elderly woman. But the woman is not just an average citizen: She is a curandera, or healer. Carlos sees her as an old witch, and he manages to snatch a cookie known as a bizcochito from her home. After Carlos takes a bite of the treat, he is swiftly turned into a calf. Amadeo, the victim’s older brother, and his friend Monree need to figure out how to turn Carlos back into a boy. The first idea is to go to Monree’s grandfather. The man is a shaman, but, unfortunately, he is currently out of town helping a grandson on a vision quest. To make matters worse, the boys realize that the curandera is following them, and she doesn’t seem happy. Her ability to change into different animals only frightens the duo more. The boys make their way back to the Lucero home, where more of the family becomes involved. But how will they manage to save Carlos and battle a woman skilled in magic? Even if it seems unlikely that Carlos will remain a calf forever, the journey to his redemption is full of twists, comedy, and sprinklings of Spanish. The authors provide a helpful glossary at the end that translates the Spanish words like “abuelo” (grandfather) and “cueva” (cave). And the tale’s humor, much like many of the earthy colors used by debut illustrator Hardy throughout the book, comes through strongly. For instance, a large talking rat named José with a fondness for beer, cheese, and dancing tends to steal all the scenes he appears in. In addition, whenever people become creatures, they retain something of their human looks (José has a mustache), and the results are cute and amusing. By contrast, more serious portions can languish. The curandera is given a backstory to explain her cruelness. She mourns a tragic event in her past yet her method of coping seems a little hard to believe even by quirky villain standards. Nevertheless, the narrative never drags and offers plenty of action. There are chases, monsters, and episodes of family bonding galore. There is even room in the end for some sentimentality.
A fantastical and satisfying romp near the Rio Grande.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73377-301-0
Page Count: 166
Publisher: North Fourth Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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