After his vicar father deserted the family, 16-year-old Jon lost his Christian faith. Falling under the spell of a classmate, Jeremiah, founder of the Brotherhood of the Hebetheus, Jon has joined four other boys as his disciple. Now, under Jeremiah’s direction, they kidnap a Hindu girl whom Jeremiah claims is a terrorist. From their hideout, an empty cottage with a dead woman in it (undiscovered for some days), they record grandiose demands and send them to the media. The novel, set in contemporary England, quickly bogs down in long speeches and didactic commentary. A less-than-credible plot doesn’t help, but the real problem is that once at the cottage, the novel goes around in circles rather than build steadily to the climax. Characters lose and regain their faith in Jeremiah; each turn provides the author a new opportunity to pontificate on global warming, consumerism and fear-mongering until the reader, too, feels like a hostage. Although Mills claims to be a former cult member, Judy Waite’s Forbidden (2004), offers greater insight into cult psychology in a far better novel. (Fiction. 14 & up)
Pub Date: June 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-84465-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
In a strikingly beautiful scene, Tessie, not yet six, hears a Mozart symphony she’s never heard before, transcribes it into colors in her head, crayons it onto page after page, and is then able to play it on her violin. The limits and benefits of being raised as a prodigy color her life until she is 16, when she freezes and plays poorly in a high-profile solo concert. Back in Montana with her calm father, Tess reacquaints herself with the land she grew up on and gets to know her new stepmother and adoring stepsister. Another story about a violin, in alternating chapters, features a teenager named Frederick who lived on nearby Montana land several generations earlier. Frederick’s story is less compelling than Tess’s, and Tess’s narrow-minded, ambitious mother is written too simply, but Tess’s passion and struggle for her music sing melody, harmony, and detail. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-202670-3
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
As 14-year-old Taswell, a virgin, relates in this epistolary novel the progress of her pregnancy, she draws readers into her supreme self-confidence, toward her unshakable conviction that she is about to bring forth a prophet. From the small convent school where she has been sent because her grandmother Mavis doesn’t quite know what to do with her, Taswell writes letters. At first her case appears to be one of ordinary self-absorption, common among teenagers, but soon it becomes clear that Taswell’s belief that the world revolves around her has reached monumental proportions. She writes to the beautiful and self-possessed Mavis, to accuse her of being more concerned with her own life and career than with Taswell herself; she writes to her father, Charles, who after several marriages seems to have found a woman he really loves; and she writes to a kind of guardian spirit named Pim. Taswell holds her secret close, and readers watch with a kind of dread and fascination as it unfolds. She enlists a schoolmate to be her midwife, and as news of her pregnancy spreads, Taswell faces the school authorities and her relatives with equal ferocity. While the denouement is a bit too easy, readers will be tied into the claustrophobic interior of Taswell’s heart for the duration. With great clarity and precision, Collins shows how all the strength and good wishes of the nuns who teach Taswell, and the shortcomings of the relatives who love her, are not enough; this heroine will face her guardian angel, or angels, and see her own way clear. Riveting. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-97119-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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