A thoughtful, trenchant adventure story.
In this dystopian novel, a counselor searches for his missing girlfriend, a tech heiress who was raised off the grid.
In America’s near future, Ronnie recently lost his job as a children’s librarian, and he was replaced by a robot. Now he has a new position, counseling people who have lost their jobs to robots. His first client is Colin, but they’ve barely started when RIFF23, Ronnie’s personal robot, informs him that his girlfriend, Hilary Francesca Mills, is missing. Ronnie and Hil haven’t spoken since they had a fight two days ago. Hil’s parents, despite owing their own wealth to a high-tech invention, the Selfie Mirror, kept their daughter away from all things “virtual.” Unlike anyone else Ronnie knows, Hil has never owned a smartphonelike Screen or created a social media profile; instead, the duo have communicated by landline (her phone number is 2). This makes Hil hard to track down, so Ronnie, RIFF23, and Colin go in search of her along with others whom they pick up along the way. Their investigations into fringe communities, such as UFO believers and 1990s rave re-enactors, suggest that Hil is at an anti-technology commune at Walden Pond called “HDT,” after Henry David Thoreau. Under the control of Johns Calum, a charismatic leader who’s also Hil’s ex-boyfriend, HDT has become a radical organization—and Johns has shady plans for Hil. A rescue operation develops, but will Hil be able to avoid becoming a pawn in Johns’ game? In her debut novel, Colombo tells an absorbing adventure yarn that satirizes American society by exaggerating the relentless logging of personal experiences on Instagram and other social media platforms. In this future world, people are obsessed with TV shows such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; one rich man decorates his yard to resemble a graveyard in the latter’s town of Sunnydale. Although the satire is effective, it’s also a bit disappointing not to see a fresher, more forward-looking vision of the future. Still, Colombo’s characterization is strong; the portrait of HDT’s founder, Losi West, is especially well-rounded and poignant. Also, the author’s portrayal of the universal desire for connection is vividly real, moving, and relatable.
A thoughtful, trenchant adventure story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997862-3-9
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Spaceboy Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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