At its best, 8W8-Global Space Tribes provides a gentle, relatively harmless way to introduce the reader to a bevy of...
Fifteen of globalization’s children collaborate to design a piece of software that renders visible the invisible networks of the Internet Age.
Readers should be warned at the outset that this is no novel in the conventional sense, but a Socratic dialogue for the early 21st century of globalization. That dialogue is sparked when Oskar Feller, an IT journalist and international jet-setter, gazes out of an airplane window at the nighttime lights of the cities of Belgium far below. Oskar, or “OK Fellow” as his friends call him, feels a sense of frustration that those city lights can’t tell him much about the people they serve: What are their incomes? Where do they work? What do they believe in? How many are BMW-motorcycle enthusiasts like him? To get answers to questions like these on a global scale, Oskar enlists help from his 14 fellow members of the Golden Sky, a loosely coalesced think-tank whose membership represents various economic, political, scientific and cultural professions. At the palatial Hawaiian home of Internet entrepreneur Winston Chee, the 15 “Golden Skyers” collaboratively give birth to the computer-modeling program dubbed “8W8” (a strange-seeming choice of name, until they explain that “eight” is an auspicious number in Chinese numerology and “W” stands for “world people”). The notional 8W8 program allows the user to enter the cockpit of a virtual helicopter and tour a dynamic landscape representing not Earth’s geography, but its invisible demographic, economic, environmental and even religious characteristics. The author’s decision to present this intriguing concept as a novel is an idiosyncratic one, making the book feel at times like a tug-of-war between an inventor and a novelist.
At its best, 8W8-Global Space Tribes provides a gentle, relatively harmless way to introduce the reader to a bevy of interesting new terms and concepts; at its worst, it comes off as the novelization of a software user’s manual.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9799549-1-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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