by Rusty Jaquays ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2015
An admirable dramatization of a real-world event, with a hero who’s much better at helping others than himself.
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In Jaquays’ debut historical drama, treacherous waters and armed Cuban guards await a crawfisherman transporting refugees during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
First mate Shorty is a Yankee who’s proven himself working on a crawfish boat in the Florida Keys. But Dagger, the boat’s captain, has a way to make some real money by taking advantage of the Cuban exodus and bringing people to the U.S. Shorty docks at Mariel Harbor in Cuba and waits for officials to OK the request for taking refugees. Tensions are high: law enforcement and military are between Havana and the harbor, ready to fire at locals attempting to flee the country as stowaways. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Mario, at the start of his unwelcome but mandatory military service, risks a daring escape. Jaquays’ novel features melodrama and a bit of suspense with a rich historical backdrop. The story is truly about Shorty, but the Mariel boatlift isn’t mere decoration since it drives the main plot. Mario’s flight from his squad and his dangerous swim to the harbor, for example, are highlights, and his family’s endeavor to reach American shores is equally gripping. Shorty, too, is a sympathetic protagonist; it’s abundantly clear that he cares about his passengers, befriending an elderly woman in particular, despite knowing very little Spanish. He likewise disregards his own safety to make repairs to the boat’s exterior while at sea, just to ensure that everyone reaches the U.S. Shorty’s personal story, however, is decidedly less engaging. He has a girlfriend, Kim Sue, though the narrative refers to him at least once as her fiance. Their relationship seems perfectly fine when they’re together, but later descriptions, with Kim Sue back in America, are increasingly dismissive. Their relationship is nothing more than a lead-up to Shorty’s infatuation with Cuba-born Rosa, an unquestionably worthy woman who saves someone from certain death by hypothermia. The ending provides closure for Shorty, but Jaquays smartly allows readers to see what has become (or will become) of both Rosa and Mario.
An admirable dramatization of a real-world event, with a hero who’s much better at helping others than himself.Pub Date: March 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508545378
Page Count: 164
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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