An engrossing, painful, and disturbing tale of education against the odds.
In this novel based on a true story, a boy with cerebral palsy struggles to find his place in a dysfunctional school system.
After he is born, Alan Jones suffers a severe stroke. Even if he survives, the doctors tell his mother, he will be in a vegetative state without the ability to interact with others. But she doubts the physicians’ predictions. When Alan is 2 years old, his mother has him evaluated by Dr. Shasta, who is delighted to discover his intellectual capabilities. Alan’s mother asks the physician if the boy possesses average intelligence. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that,” asserts Shasta. “I would say that he’s smarter than an average kid.” At first, Alan attends a school for special needs students. He repeatedly experiences abuse—first on the bus, when a mentally disabled student bites him, then at school, when an angry aide ruthlessly spanks him. Still, Alan thrives in the academic environment. By middle school, he needs new challenges. When Ms. Hawthorne, a school psychiatrist, evaluates him, she finds that the system has failed to give Alan the education he deserves. It’s determined that Alan should attend “regular school,” at least for part of the day. As Alan gets older, he becomes more and more independent, trying his best to fend and advocate for himself. When he enters high school, he’s the only special needs pupil among 3,000 students. While Alan’s proud of his accomplishments, he’s also lonely, “a clique of one.” He grapples with the pressures of being a standard bearer for the special needs community, and he desires what any high schooler wants: friends, a sense of belonging. He’s just like any other kid except that he faces an undue portion of difficulties.
Nankivell’s novel is a scathing rebuke of America’s education system, which has not only failed to provide appropriate educational opportunities for differently abled students, but also has exposed those pupils to ruthless and inhumane practices. The book shines when it examines what it’s like for Alan to go about his day, depending on others to help him with every bodily function. Through Alan’s eyes, the tale looks at the educators and aides who work with this population both critically and pityingly. The story explores how hard the duties are and how poorly the system compensates these employees, but it doesn’t allow such factors to excuse the cruelty it observes. In one particularly well-constructed passage, the author takes readers through Alan’s morning routine, from waking up early and being fed breakfast by his mother to getting strapped into his leg braces, put in his wheelchair, loaded onto the bus, and driven to school. Alan is at the mercy of others. Though he is kind and smart, the tale shows him at certain low points, when he can be vindictive and harsh. He’s not an angel—he’s a human being. But at times, the work strains to overcome a formulaic approach to telling the story of surmounting adversity. Again and again, Alan is embarrassed or made fun of, then gets his revenge when he proves his classmates—and sometimes his teachers—wrong. The writing is at its best when it hews closely to Alan’s physical reality; when it tries to generalize or draw larger lessons, the prose suffers.
An engrossing, painful, and disturbing tale of education against the odds.Pub Date: May 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4835-9688-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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