An affecting work of juvenile fiction featuring memorable, sympathetic canine characters.
In this novel for older grade-school readers, a runaway abused dog joins a group of other rescue animals and finds both courage and her calling.
Bella (Goodbye, Poonjab, 2018) begins her story with a harsh flashback, as Misha, a little pit bull mix, remembers the cruelty of her former owner; she later ended up on the scary city streets “with nowhere to go” and “no family to love her.” Now Misha is sharing a car ride with Butchy, another rescued dog, to their new home in the country. The journey sparks a second memory for Misha—one of loneliness, terror, near-starvation, and injury, before a garbage truck driver took her to a shelter and a veterinarian’s care. (Bella doesn’t sugarcoat why some dogs end up in shelters; Butchy’s owners, for instance, were killed by a drunk driver.) Misha and Butchy join an eccentric group of other rescues-turned-therapy dogs, led by Tank, a canine Iraq War veteran with the personality of a drill sergeant; little Maltese Gabriella; and Coco, a former circus dog. The dogs’ caretaker, disabled ex-soldier Tommy, tells them that their “special duty” is to fight “depression with joy…and loneliness with love.” As Misha wrestles with fear and a lack of confidence, Bella invites readers’ empathy for the other dogs by giving them their own backstories. The author touchingly handles Misha’s realization that she’s worthy of receiving and giving love. Bella’s pleasant, full-color illustrations punctuate the text, adding homely charm. She also adds unexpected elements to the story, such as Misha recognizing Tank’s vulnerability during a crisis. Bella’s use of dialogue, however, is a bit confusing. The dogs speak to one another and to humans, initiating speech and responding to it. However, it’s unclear, as written, if the people and animals are literally conversing or if their communication is merely meant to represent a sense of mutual understanding.
An affecting work of juvenile fiction featuring memorable, sympathetic canine characters.Pub Date: May 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-945463-31-0
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Vazdoo, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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