An unusual coming-of-age novel, though a bit too opaque to be a real success.
Her mother is dead, her father’s in prison and she’s trying to pass as a boy—the teenage world of Kendra “Kenny” Lugo is anything but easy in this somber fifth novel from Reynolds (Writing/Old Dominion Univ.; Firefly Cloak, 2006, etc.).
These days Kenny has just one thing on her mind—what will happen when she turns 18. For years she’s lived with Aunt Glo, her father’s girlfriend, who is mother to her own brood: oldest Tim-Tim, teenage Quincy and little Daphne (really the child of Glo’s runaway daughter Constance). They live in an old house in a quiet, Southern seaside town, a place where the abandoned carnival grounds and a soon-to-be condo development coexist. Kenny spends much of the slim novel fixing up the workshop in the backyard (where she hopes to live), and obsessing about Clara Tinsley, the college girl who was shot next door. Clara and a friend climbed through the window of what they thought was their weekend rental cottage—but they were wrong. The house belongs to Jarvis Stanley, who mistook the girls for criminals. Kenny ponders the killing over and over. But this meandering novel is centered on Kenny’s reinvention of herself—her tightly bound breasts, her shorn hair, her frantic refusal of a female identity. She claims she wanted to look like a boy to stop Tim-Tim from molesting her, but it’s not as straightforward as that. Maybe she’s a lesbian, maybe she has gender dysphoria; either way she’s taunted at school and believes she’s unlovable. Reynolds’ character study begins well—Kenny is bright, fragile and worth knowing—but too much is left unsaid, too much is filtered through Kenny’s lack of insight into her own world and ways. What’s left are the kind of snapshots Kenny takes for the yearbook—fleeting moments that hint at a larger story.
An unusual coming-of-age novel, though a bit too opaque to be a real success.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-39389-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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