THE REALITY OF SAVING YOURSELF

Name: THE REALITY OF SAVING YOURSELF
Author: Thomas Curry
ISBN: 978-1-79602-677-1

by Thomas Curry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 2019

A young African-American boy learns to be tough and ruthless to survive the entrapments of urban poverty in Curry’s debut novel.

Frank “Franky B” Smith is born in Chicago to a 16-year-old mother, who was the daughter of a teenager herself. His mom—whose name, Hope, vibrates with poignant irony—does her best to care for her son, but she succumbs to an addiction to drugs. Her downward spiral leads to a long string of short-term “stepdaddies” who abuse Franky. Eventually, the state authorities step in and, by the age of 7, Franky is in the foster system. Driven by a desire to get back home to his mother, he does his best to sabotage each foster situation. But every attempt only takes him deeper into the system, until he finally winds up at the Thomas Jefferson Group Home for Boys, where many employees are, in Franky’s words, “racist…burnt-out…abusive…sexual predators.” Facing violence from other young residents and from those in authority, Franky learns to respond with merciless brutality, which sets him on a very dangerous path. Along the way, however, his meaningful bonds with friends and family offer hope. Curry’s taut and insightful narrative skillfully evokes the development of a frightened child into an angry teenager and a criminal young man. The author’s depiction of the role of gangs as substitute families, and of the tangled alliances between gangs and their various chapters, is astute, and he renders the language patterns of working-class urban black people convincingly. Moments of homophobia among the characters unfortunately go unchallenged in the text, as when Franky’s friend and mentor tells him, “You didn’t hit like no fag, so I didn’t want to see you become one.” Readers may also wish that Franky’s redemption was more fully developed, but overall, it’s a satisfying portrait of a life reclaimed.

An intense and often moving tale of a gang member’s life.

Pub Date: April 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-79602-677-1

Page Count: 114

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: July 24, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION

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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

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. 10, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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If nothing else, you have to giggle over how this novel’s namesake, who held vicious white supremacist opinions, must be...

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LOVECRAFT COUNTRY

by Matt Ruff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 2016

Some very nice, very smart African-Americans are plunged into netherworlds of malevolent sorcery in the waning days of Jim Crow—as if Jim Crow alone wasn’t enough of a curse to begin with.

In the northern U.S. of the mid-1950s, as depicted in this merrily macabre pastiche by Ruff (The Mirage, 2012, etc.), Driving While Black is an even more perilous proposition than it is now. Ask Atticus Turner, an African-American Korean War veteran and science-fiction buff, who is compelled to face an all-too-customary gauntlet of racist highway patrolmen and hostile white roadside hamlets en route from his South Side Chicago home to a remote Massachusetts village in search of his curmudgeonly father, Montrose, who was lured away by a young white “sharp dresser” driving a silver Cadillac with tinted windows. At least Atticus isn’t alone; his uncle George, who puts out annual editions of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, is splitting driving duties in his Packard station wagon “with inlaid birch trim and side paneling.” Also along for the ride is Atticus’ childhood friend Letitia Dandridge, another sci-fi fan, whose family lived in the same neighborhood as the Turners. It turns out this road trip is merely the beginning of a series of bizarre chimerical adventures ensnaring both the Turner and Dandridge clans in ancient rituals, arcane magical texts, alternate universes, and transmogrifying potions, all of which bears some resemblance to the supernatural visions of H.P. Lovecraft and other gothic dream makers of the past. Ruff’s ripping yarns often pile on contrivances and overextend the narratives in the grand manner of pulp storytelling, but the reinvented mythos here seems to have aroused in him a newfound empathy and engagement with his characters.

If nothing else, you have to giggle over how this novel’s namesake, who held vicious white supremacist opinions, must be doing triple axels in his grave at the way his imagination has been so impudently shaken and stirred.