While overly complex in places, this tale offers a nuanced look at death.
A novel explores one man’s special relationship with death and the afterlife.
Gordy (Tangled Woods and Dark Waters, 2017) presents a peculiar Washington, D.C.–based doctor by the name of Lukas Vangelis. Luke is a hospice care physician who is sometimes able to communicate with people who are no longer living. The first such exchange readers observe is a “voice-disturbance” from Luke’s dead mother, Eleni. It is from Eleni that Luke inherited his power to connect with the “world of the unquiet dead.” Eleni now informs Luke that he will need to find someone to follow in his footsteps. She also tells him that the road ahead will be challenging. Much of his journey will involve a young woman named Katie Lyle. Katie seems to have it all: a kind husband, a lovely home in Florida, and a bright boy named Timmy. But she learns that it may all be taken away: Katie is diagnosed with cancer. She soon embarks on her own grueling odyssey. As Luke specializes in hospice care and Katie faces the sobering idea of an early death, it is apparent that their paths will eventually converge. Meanwhile, readers are also given glimpses of Luke’s background, the many relatives concerned about Katie, and the health care professionals involved in treating her illness. With so many characters wandering through the story, it can be tough to keep track of who is who. Flat statements do not help distinguish the players; at one point, a character asks, “Isn’t the breeze wonderful?” Nevertheless, though the tale can get overcrowded with relatively minor figures, Katie’s trials are extremely plausible. How does one go from perfectly healthy to a troubling diagnosis and the encroaching fear that the battle may be unwinnable? Her situation is treated with a realism that eschews melodrama. Even if, say, Luke’s family history can be more convoluted than is necessary (never mind the details about Katie’s extended family and the marriage of one of Luke’s employees), the book generates a strong sense of empathy.
While overly complex in places, this tale offers a nuanced look at death.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64111-151-5
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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