A touching, absorbing story of a vulnerable person confronting obstacles on her journey toward pride and self-reliance.
A young woman with a traumatic brain injury moves forward with the help of a diverse collection of friends in Imhoff’s (Painted Wings, 2015, etc.) latest novel.
Kim “Flicker” Frechette was only a teenager when a drunk driver smashed into her car and derailed her life. Now she’s in her early 20s and chafing at the confines of the group home that she shares with two other girls, Lori and Beth. She’s still slowly recovering from brain damage from the accident, and she processes information more slowly than most other people do. However, she resists when people put her in the same category as her developmentally disabled housemates: “I wasn’t born like this,” she thinks. “I used to be smart.” As she explores the thrills and trepidations of her increasing independence, she begins to understand that making adult decisions isn’t easy. Fortunately, she has a group of concerned friends to help her negotiate the transition: Katie Martin, who runs the local bookstore, and her partner, Annie Curtis (whose story is told in Imhoff’s previous novel); and short-order cook Jesse Davis, an ex-schoolteacher with his own traumatic past. Together, these mentors watch out for Flicker, particularly when her choices lead her into potential danger. Imhoff ties his protagonist’s somewhat delayed coming-of-age story to more serious issues of date rape, domestic abuse, sex trafficking, and the long-term effects of brain trauma, and the resulting narrative is both educational and suspenseful. Flicker is an engaging character as she gradually learns which people to trust and which to avoid and as she grows to appreciate the innocent kindness of Lori and Beth rather than distancing herself from them. That said, the narration sometimes feels like a didactic educational pamphlet about traumatic brain injury, and the characterizations are sometimes simplistic. For example, Flicker’s boyfriend is so one-dimensional that it’s hard to understand what draws her to him, and her friends seem almost too good to be true. Still, readers won’t be able to help cheering Flicker’s triumph over those who seek to take advantage of her.
A touching, absorbing story of a vulnerable person confronting obstacles on her journey toward pride and self-reliance.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Cedar Lake Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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