A funny, raucous, nostalgic, and emotional journey through the politics of family, young love, peer pressure, and...
Set to the soundtrack of 1980s music, this tale follows an awkward teenager coming of age while finding love and redemption in the Midwest.
Bahar’s debut novel is autobiographical down to the characters’ names. His fictional Ron Bahar is the quintessential outsider: a half-Israeli, half-Indian living in Lincoln, Nebraska. The only Jew in his high school class, he feels terminally self-conscious, suffers from irritable bowel syndrome, falls hopelessly in love with a gentile girl (against his parents’ dictates), and constantly lives in the shadow of much cooler friends like Tommy: “How…is it fair that tonight, he stars in a high-school football game, drinks like a fish at a post-game party, gets an escort in his chariot, and spends the night alone at home with Ms. Bodacious?” Naturally, Ron is also an A student dedicated to achieving his parents’ dream for him: to become a doctor. Bahar wields biting humor like a sword, skewering everything from the trials and tribulations of growing up to rock ’n’ roll and the expectations of parents and peers. He deftly uses pop culture as a metaphor for his namesake’s life in the form of song lyrics and references to television and radio. Ron’s love life consists largely of a platonic relationship with an insecure girl and a series of wrong moves at the worst possible times—both with her and other women. But amid the unrelenting teenage angst that seems to define Ron’s existence while providing readers with endless, albeit empathetic, laughter, this protagonist has a secret weapon: his voice. While his parents would prefer he only use this talent singing in temple, Ron displays a passion for music and works as a roadie for The Well Endowed, a local band big on the bar mitzvah scene. Things get even more interesting for Ron and his circle when his skill elevates him from a mere musical hanger-on to the titled frontman. Ultimately, the hero of this sharp, witty tale should find a place in every reader’s heart.
A funny, raucous, nostalgic, and emotional journey through the politics of family, young love, peer pressure, and individuality.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943006-44-1
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
SEEN & HEARD
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