A captivating animal tale that explores universal themes.
A wolf comes of age and finds his place in the world.
In this debut novel, a wolf goes from vulnerable cub to independent adult, navigating a landscape where the weather and other animals can be beneficial or dangerous. The book opens with the unnamed narrator as a sheltered young pup, just beginning to meet his family (young sister, White-Ears; Ma and Pa; and older brother, Scruff-Paw) and explore the world outside his den. The narrator and White-Ears learn to hunt, read the messages left by other animals, and be on guard against threats. After Scruff-Paw fights with his parents and leaves to make his own way in the world, the family heads west, looking for more safety and better hunting on the coast. During the journey, the narrator and White-Ears are left alone when their parents face off against an unfamiliar pack of wolves. When it becomes clear that Ma and Pa will not be returning, the two siblings head for the coast. White-Ears is injured, and the narrator takes care of her, stealing food from a wolf he dubs Notch-Tail. After his sister bonds with another wolf they meet, the narrator takes off alone to search for his parents one last time. He faces new dangers, fights to survive, and eventually reconnects and mates with Notch-Tail. The pair’s cubs face tragedies of their own, and the wolf family continues to find moments of joy where it can. Rong does an excellent job of transforming the wolves into dynamic characters, with needs and emotions that are compelling to readers but not overly humanlike, differentiating them with plausible quirks, like the narrator’s love of fishing. The descriptive language is vivid, particularly when it comes to the narrator’s hunting and feeding sessions (“I reached into the belly and pulled out a chunk of meat, and I ate it whole, feeling the tender strands pop in my mouth, mashing against my teeth before sliding down my throat”). The solid story delivers a generally satisfying coming-of-age plot that celebrates the natural world without romanticizing it.
A captivating animal tale that explores universal themes.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77785-850-6
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Teng Rong
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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