An absorbing, emotional tale with a strong hook for animal lovers.
In Feuerstein’s debut paranormal thriller, a young woman learns about her heritage, including special powers, as she’s tracked by government forces.
Morey Chance, 25, a wildlife photographer, is haunted. In a dream that’s recurred since her girlhood, she sees a shadowy woman tell her father that Morey “has the magic.” During a trip to British Columbia, a grizzly bear looks Morey straight in the eye and leads her to a hidden valley where bears are safe from humans. Then Morey’s archaeologist father, Francis, dies, and Morey returns home to her Aunt Katherine’s house on Maine’s Apoquaque Island. There, she learns startling truths about her mother and receives her “birthright”: a mysterious cylinder inscribed with strange symbols. A similar cylinder, discovered by her father, destroyed his career when it was deemed to be a faked ancient artifact. However, National Security Agency operatives are now eager to claim Morey’s cylinder, and they’re headed for Apoquaque. Meanwhile, Morey meets some island residents and an intriguing, attractive scientist named Hill, who’s studying the island’s ecosystem and expresses concern about an offshore oil rig. Morey finds that Hill’s presence feels “warm and good and wonderfully familiar,” and Hill is equally drawn to Morey. Not only that, she helps Morey discover more about her birthright and her mission. Soon, Morey undertakes a dangerous rite of passage as NSA agents close in. Feuerstein’s novel taps into a potent, poignant modern fantasy—a safe haven for the world’s endangered animals—and she does it without sentimentally tugging on readers’ heartstrings. Although the theme of discovering inherent, supernatural abilities is hardly new, Morey is an adult instead of an adolescent, which allows for more grown-up storytelling. Feuerstein captures her scenes and characters well, possessing a good eye for details: a dilapidated cabin, for example, is described as looking as if it “would be happier if allowed to lie down.” In fact, so much is done well in this novel that it’s surprising and unfortunate to see the hoary cliché of a villainous albino appear. However, the satisfying ending leaves room for potential sequels, which would be most welcome.
An absorbing, emotional tale with a strong hook for animal lovers.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4921-8202-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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