A bold, politically minded tale with a spiritual soul.
A feminist alternative history novel explores the morality of violence.
In a world slightly different from readers’ own, women suffer the same primordial trespasses against them: unwanted sexual advances, harassment, violence, silencing. In this realm, however, a vigilante organization exists in order to strike back against those who trespass against them. One woman who has suffered more than most is Averil Parnell. The lone survivor of an infamous massacre meant to snuff out the first-ever class of female Roman Catholic priests, Averil is of two minds on the nature of violent justice. The church teaches forgiveness, of course, but some acts may be impossible to pardon. “What do you do with the anger?” Averil muses while counseling a young woman who wants to kill her male blackmailer. “And the young woman’s more immediate, more pressing concern: What should I do with it?” Regardless of Averil’s association (or lack thereof) with extralegal groups, her symbolism and mysticism place her at the center of an ever expanding cult of admirers and believers even as her failure to meet a different vow—that of celibacy—threatens to upend everything this priest has built. Whether peaceful or violent, no movement that challenges the status quo can hope to escape the notice of the powers that be. Kearns writes in a precise prose that elegantly skates the line between literary and conversational, delivering sharp images and observant barbs: “Nothing could rattle her calm, not the seedy diner with its greasy windows and tasteless meat loaf, nor the equally seedy convenience store across the street, where she sensed the usual unwanted male attention as soon as she pushed through the door.” The world the author has created is inventive and provocative, but she does not rely on premise alone to sustain the book. Averil and the other point-of-view characters are fully formed and richly motivated, and the novel’s daring critique of today’s patriarchy never feels didactic or forced. As in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, this novel offers an alternate reality that feels disturbingly real. It demands the reader live inside it and see who gets destroyed.
A bold, politically minded tale with a spiritual soul.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937543-42-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Jaded Ibis Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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