A fine example of the quest story, beautifully illustrated.
In this YA fantasy adventure, a girl’s visit to an art museum takes her into a magical land where she’s at the center of an ancient prophecy and mission.
Laney, a high schooler, is at the art museum doing research when she slips into a closed gallery to see an exhibition of surreal paintings by real-life artist (and the book’s illustrator) Michael Cheval. She begins to feel dizzy, the absurdist images spinning, when someone shouts “Get out!” Stumbling through the emergency exit, Laney finds herself lost in another world, a snowy forest. She eventually ends up in a cottage, where a woman greets her: “I am Shaka, the Guardian of Tarzetta Trail, the heir of the arrows, the dreamer of dreams.” Laney’s arrival has been prophesied, it seems; she is the foretold “Sorceress from the West.” Evil has come to Shaka’s land in the form of poisonous black fogs and marauding wolves. It’s Laney’s destiny to restore peace by journeying to a clearing in the West Woods in time for the syzygy, or solar eclipse, “the magical time when anything is possible!” Shaka accompanies Laney, giving her some magical gifts to help the quest. Along their journey, the party meets friends and foes, encountering dangers and setbacks. Laney also learns more about how the black fogs arose from “greed and folly” and how to harness her powers, facing tests in Shaka’s world—and her own. Apseloff (Michael Cheval’s Magic, 2019, etc.) offers a heroine who’s initially apathetic but is challenged by circumstances to find inner qualities of courage, determination, and faith in destiny. The odyssey is varied nicely by side adventures, such as escaping a deadly ravine and crossing an ice-bound river. Linking the fantasy quest to a frightening and all-too-plausible, real-world situation is a smart move, deepening the resolution. The author has a good ear for fantasy diction, which helps create an appropriate sense of otherness for Shaka’s land. The attractive, accomplished black-and-white illustrations are well integrated with the storytelling, with Cheval’s (Michael Cheval’s Magic, 2019, etc.) lovely crosshatching and draftsmanship lending reality to the surreal.
A fine example of the quest story, beautifully illustrated.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-936772-22-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Ohio Distinctive Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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