Languid but disjointed story fails to forge any connection with the reader.
Two deaf girls, one dead and one living, struggle to forge relationships and wax philosophical in this melancholy novella by Lee (The Cake Thief, 2007, etc.).
Sam, a partially deaf (or, rather, “imperfect”) young female artist, dies when she trips over the curb and is struck by a car. In Heaven, she talks to a generic God and watches over her parents and the young couple who accidentally killed her. In a stream of consciousness ranging from elegiac to casual, Sam muses about her mixed relief and regret over her death–the pleasantries of Heaven and the disappointment of dying before she found love. Meanwhile, on Earth, the rich, self-centered couple gives birth to an “imperfect” daughter of their own. Lilly, deaf from birth, is also an artist. And like Sam’s parents, the couple is unable to fully cope with their child’s deafness and their increasing disconnection from her. When Lilly attends a college program for the hearing impaired, she becomes involved with her professor Ned, and her fights with her mother over the affair further the divide. Eventually, a restless Lilly goes abroad to France for art school, taking a break from her clueless parents and effectively ending her relationship with Ned. She graduates and enters academia, but continues to misunderstand and be misunderstood by the world before eventually reconnecting with Ned. Although the characters’ lives are connected superficially, the only meaningful relationship is between Lilly and Ned–and even that, which begins effortlessly if mystifyingly, becomes strained. Lee’s illustrations add vague visual interest, but her writing is uneven, not to mention riddled with errors. The prose is dreamy and unhurried, sometimes as warm as a sun-drenched room, but too often turns stale, even tedious. The characters’ reflections on life and love, meant to be insightful, more often come across as simplistic and pedestrian. Sam’s ruminations on the nature of God in particular are insufferably trite.
Languid but disjointed story fails to forge any connection with the reader.Pub Date: March 24, 2005
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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