An engaging and memorable social novel that involves dogfighting.
Romagnoli tells the story of an interconnected group of people in Harlem.
Set in the coarse streets of 1980s Harlem, this debut novel follows a large cast of characters navigating the world of dogfighting, public school, and basketball. There’s Rosco, a feared dogfighting ringleader and loan shark who people know is the most dangerous when he’s smiling; Desiree, the mother of Rosco’s son, who wonders why there aren’t any miracles in real life; Vincent DeRosa, a recovering drug addict–turned–public schoolteacher looking to make a difference in the world; Marisol, Desiree’s cousin, who hates Rosco and wants to protect her family from his influence; Antoine and Tyrone, teenagers who work for Rosco, tasked with taking down dead dogs from the hellish Losing Tree. Most surprisingly, there’s the ghost of Redrum, a three-legged pit bull Rosco put down, who has reappeared to bind the human characters closer together. As Tyrone explains: “Rum, he come back from the dead. Like a dog world miracle. Three days after he was hangin’ on the tree, he be seen back alive, huntin’ down a white man in Morningside.” This jolt of the supernatural is the catalyst that propels the characters toward their destinies, forcing them to consider what parts of themselves they are willing to sacrifice—and who they might be able to save—along the way. Ambitious and sprawling, this compelling book delivers critiques of American institutions, from family and education to law enforcement and criminal organizations. Romagnoli is adept at dislocating the reader within a real-but-unfamiliar world, as in the tale’s opening scene: a tree full of hanging dogs, some living and some dead. He has an ear for dialogue and a gift for establishing character with a few short clauses (one character, Ivory White, is introduced as a former “member of Rosco’s high school basketball team until he got expelled for pimp-slapping a referee”). While the basic landscapes and conclusions of the story reveal nothing new, Romagnoli achieves them in a way that feels fresh, keeping the reader with him to the final image.
An engaging and memorable social novel that involves dogfighting.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 439
Publisher: Alternative Book Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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