Original ideas and strong prose in a tale that combines mysticism with a touch of Indiana Jones adventure.
A work of speculative fiction centered on some highly unusual gemstones.
In a shipping warehouse on an unnamed, remote tropical island in the Indian Ocean,at a vaguely defined time of political turmoil,a gem and fossil dealer named Craag reveals a fabulous discovery to his colleague, Wiley. It’s a new kind of stone that’s never before been seen in the trade and is therefore of inestimable value to potential collectors. Nicknamed “fish eyes” by the island’s people because of its bubblelike matrix, the gem isn’t merely a pretty thing to polish into knickknacks and beads; its embedded orbs possess strange and powerful mystical properties when activated by moonlight. A local government coup forces Wiley to leave the island before he can attempt to mine the stones, and 30 years later, Wiley is dying of cancer, attended by his devoted, much younger wife, Nadja. Desperate to experience the orbs’ magical effects, he enlists an adventurer named Roan to excavate the lode and bring the rocks to him at his Utah hospice. Roan’s mining crew faces great danger, working in extreme conditions at an isolated location reachable only by boat. Spirituality and mystery are key elements of Shapero’s story, which features dream sequences, accounts of visions, and elements of magical realism. The author only gives each character one name, doesn’t name locations at all, and never specifies dates, creating a feeling of timelessness and universality. The narrative remains grounded in the characters’ here and now by vivid, lyrical descriptions of elements of nature, including the island’s chirping frogs, wild bats, and drenching rain, and the desert landscape around the hospice; a collared lizard does “push-ups” on a flat stone, and the hem of a woman’s turquoise sari curls “like surf.” Wiley, Nadja, Roan, and the other players each evoke very different kinds of faith, and each confront their own moral dilemmas. The tale also offers a unique imagining of what might happen to the human soul after it’s left the body, provoking a sense of wonder and a lack of concrete resolution.
Original ideas and strong prose in a tale that combines mysticism with a touch of Indiana Jones adventure. (Author bio)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 184
Publisher: TooFar Media
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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