by Sueanne Pacheco ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2018
An empathetic coming-of-age story, overtaken by overwrought emotions and repulsive descriptions.
An emotional Canadian teenager is sent to live with a neighbor in this YA novel.
At 16, Nix Baines is a tightly wound ball of anxiety, anger, and pain. Her mother, a nurse, works hard and never has time for her, and her father isn’t in the picture. Nix’s emotions tend toward the histrionic; for instance, when her doctor recommends an ultrasound for unexplained abdominal pain, she imagines “her naked body on the operating table with her lower abdomen sliced open and her blood and organs oozing out.” She also has a friend, whom no one else can see or hear, named Paula. Nix’s attention is drawn to her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Langlois, who is, like Nix and her mother, a transplant to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago. When the rude and defiant teen becomes too hard for her mother to handle, she sends her to live with her grandmother—Mrs. Langlois, as Nix discovers to her astonishment. The old woman is troubled by the pains and indignities of age, has inflexible rules and habits, and, like Nix, is prone to overreaction and has an invisible friend—in her case, a cat named Oscar. As Nix tries to find equilibrium in her life, she begins flirting with an attractive teenager, a gas station worker named Claude; from Mrs. Langlois, she learns more about her family history and a vital message: “Stand up for your heart and spirit.” In her debut novel, Pacheco shows great sympathy for alienated youth and other outsiders, such as Beatrice Laird, a homeless Irish-Canadian man who works in Mrs. Langlois’ garden. In some cases, Pacheco explores these conditions in illuminating ways, as when Paula’s physical condition echoes Nix’s fears about herself. However, Nix’s emotions (self-pity, anger, shame) are so disproportionate—and her level of dissociation, represented by Paula, so pathological—that they go well beyond the usual heightened feelings of adolescence, making the relatively optimistic ending feel unlikely. Also, the book’s frequent preoccupation with morbidity and bodily effusions, including every detail of Mrs. Langlois’ nighttime incontinence, makes for unpleasant reading.
An empathetic coming-of-age story, overtaken by overwrought emotions and repulsive descriptions.Pub Date: March 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-1391-6
Page Count: 210
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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