In a battle of Japanese settings, wondrous mountains win big over bustling cities.
A withdrawn boy from Yokohama, just out of high school, comes of age after his parents enroll him in a forestry training program in a remote mountain village.
Stripped of his cellphone, which his colorful supervisor happily tosses down the mountainside, and lost without other modern conveniences, 18-year-old Yuki Hirano initially feels trapped in his new setting. Hopeless at all things arborist, with the cuts and bruises—and bruised pride—to show for it, he desperately wants to go back home. But pulled in by the natural wonders of the environment, the easygoing nature and quirkiness of the closeknit villagers, and his attraction to a pretty, motorcycle-riding schoolteacher named Nao, he awakens to deep values he has never encountered in the big city. He develops into a skilled forester, the better to draw Nao away from the married lumber company owner with whom she is infatuated. The novel builds to the semicentennial Oyamazumi-san festival in which Yuki is part of a crew tasked with cutting down the largest tree at the top of Mount Kamusari and safely guiding it down to the river. The first book in a new series by the author of The Great Passage (2011) seems aimed at a young audience. Miura spends a lot of time lightly educating her readers on the pungent glories of the mountains, the do's and don'ts of tending to the forest and the environmental rewards of doing so: "Cutting down timber, using it, continually planting more—that's how we take care of the woodlands." Yuki's breathless first-person narration is straight out of Japanese anime (albeit with off-color language), as are scenes in which characters are "spirited away." But fans of all ages should enjoy the author's blend of the traditional and the contemporary.
In a battle of Japanese settings, wondrous mountains win big over bustling cities.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2715-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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