Set during the Cuban missile crisis, this coming-of-age story follows a likable young boy as he tries to solve a mystery and find a young girl while dealing with the difficulties of adolescence.
Dewey “Doc” Ruggles doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Looking down on his bookish son, Doc’s father prefers the concrete world of numbers and science: “You live in books. You daydream like a girl. You think everything rhymes with moon, spoon, and June. Well, it doesn’t.” A polio survivor, Doc walks with a slight limp that, when combined with his glasses, doesn’t make him the most desirable guy in school. Still, the affable teen daydreams and thinks about his great-grandfather Rudyard Kipling, and when not in class, he spends time with his troubled friend Jimmy, scheming ways in which to get a girl to talk to them. “Skyfishing”— cutting loose a kite in hopes it lands near a girl, with whom a conversation can be started—is one of their preferred tactics. However, on Doc’s turn, he meets a young, unconventional nun after the kite lands on top of a Catholic church. She helps him reach the kite, though while he’s retrieving it, he sees something shocking in the church: a teenage girl, naked with a young priest. So begins part of the mystery: Sensing love at first sight, Doc must find the girl. Blended with the more serious attempt at solving the murder of Jimmy’s sister, the plot takes off as Doc traverses the pitfalls of being a high school student while trying to determine if he’s going crazy or becoming a bona fide detective. There are some legitimately funny parts—Doc’s Western civilization teacher offers some unintentionally hilarious lines regarding communists and supposed sympathizers, such as Arthur Miller—yet a few of the comedic notes miss their marks. At times, the novel can feel overpopulated with barely defined characters, which can lead to confusion while readers try to keep the characters straight. Still, there’s undeniable charm in Twombly’s work, as he mixes nostalgia for a slowly ending age of innocence with an engaging mystery that has hints of the supernatural.
An enjoyable, unconventional work for teenagers and adults alike.
Pub Date: July 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499215861
Page Count: 438
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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