Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.
A middle-grade fantasy about two boys who are separated from their parents during the reign of a petty despot.
In the Lands of Yonder is the town of Middlemost, where everyone is welcome. Adele and Kale Brandiwygn live there with their identical twin infants, Charles and James. They tell the kids apart by putting bracelets on them, labeled “C” and “J.” One day, Count Wilhelm Scream arrives in the Lands, declaring himself Supreme Ruler. He lives in Castle Mirkstone and dispatches a Special Police force to enslave anyone who disagrees with him. Naturally, the citizens of Middlemost try to resist the Count, and they hold secret meetings to strategize. The Brandiwygns host one such gathering; during it, the Special Police break in and haul the rebels toward wagons that will bring them to a prison on Mount Count. Other Middlemost folk, including Zach and Becky Zuckerman, watch in horror. Adele and Kale hurl their babies into the crowd before they’re captured, and the Zuckermans catch them. Twelve years later, Charles and James are now known as Casper and Jasper, and they live with the Zuckermans in Inglenook. Adele and Kale have been toiling away in separate camps, maintaining hope for the family’s reunion someday. The twins soon go on an adventure, battling various supernatural creatures along the way, to make that happen. In this darkly mirthful tale, Jacobs (Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café, 2015) embraces the difficult task of depicting a fascist society for a young audience. Many of her concepts—such as the textbook Adele must teach, Science and Other Lies—earn a laugh, but underneath it all is the idea that people like the Count can and do ruin real countries. However, the fact that the characters battle against him and his policies will remind readers that “the life of the mind confers a peculiar kind of liberty,” as the Brandiwygns learn in captivity. Jacobs’ prose is exceptionally bouncy in tone: “The boys were bright as comets and tough as tungsten.” Throughout, the twins’ fights with trolls and man-eating marshmallows, among other monsters, remain engaging.
Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949048-00-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Linden Tree Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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