A well-constructed, compelling addition to an ongoing time-travel tale.
McClimans (Time Underground, 2015, etc.) returns to the time-traveling adventures of teens Kristi Connors and Ty Jordan in this third volume of his YA sci-fi series.
At George Washington Prep, seventh-grader Kristi is annoyed at having to share a room with her younger, bratty stepsister. To make matters worse, she misses her classmate and best friend, Ty, whom she last saw back in 1858; they’d taken a time machine to the days of the Underground Railroad to help her ancestor gain his freedom. Ty decided to remain in the past, where he, too, lives with a sibling of sorts: his much older twin, Thomas (it makes sense in context). When Kristi begins learning about the Civil War in school—a conflict in which 700,000 men died—she realizes that the war was only a couple of years into Ty’s future when she left him. She goes to Thomas’ farm, now a museum dedicated to the Underground Railroad, and is horrified to discover a grave on the property: “Ty Jordan / Born September 19, 1847 / Died September 17, 1862 / Beloved Brother, / Youngest Surgeon in the Union Army.” Back in the past, the novel follows Ty’s attempts to serve his country, not as a soldier but as a doctor. It’s a journey that will take him from the hospitals of Washington, D.C., to his inevitable death at the Battle of Antietam. Inevitable, that is, unless Kristi and her time machine can do something about it. Fans of the series will appreciate this latest entry, which tackles perhaps the most tumultuous American epoch of them all. McClimans alternates between Kristi’s and Ty’s perspectives to tell his story of two friends trying to stop each other from becoming casualties in the nation’s bloodiest war. He writes in a sharp, energetic prose (“Kristi Connors lunged to catch a rolling can of Coca-Cola as it spread a fizzling brown wave across her desktop”), and the novel’s quick pace and unusual chronology make for an engrossing read. The book also isn’t afraid to dive into the grittiness of the period—the political divisions that tear communities apart, the horrors of warfare, and the brutality of contemporary surgical practices—and yet it also manages to remain lively and fun.
A well-constructed, compelling addition to an ongoing time-travel tale.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-937997-73-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Overdue Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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