More Disney than drama.
In Cameron’s (Puppy Tales: A Dog’s Purpose Collection, 2016, etc.) sentimental tale, a stray puppy finds a loving home, loses it after running afoul of anti–pit-bull regulations, and then, after being sent into exile, makes a wilderness trek through the Rocky Mountains home to Denver.
Consider this a reimagining of the hit film Homeward Bound minus one dog, one cat, and one human narrator. Perhaps a mix of a shepherd, mastiff, and Staffordshire but with the appearance of a pit bull, Bella narrates her tale of living under a condemned house, moving into Lucas’ loving home, and then escaping from a temporary shelter into Colorado’s wilderness. Having postponed medical school, Lucas works at a Veterans Administration facility. That gives him time to care for his military veteran mother who's suffering from PTSD. Bella brings love to the pair, but a malevolent animal control officer classifies her as a pit bull and becomes intent on euthanizing her. Reluctantly, Lucas places Bella in a foster home in Durango. Bella escapes and heads for home, sometimes traveling with Big Kitten, an orphaned cougar cub. Then Bella is picked up by a married couple. Another escape, only to be taken in by a street-dwelling, war-traumatized veteran. Then Bella’s on the road again. The narrative makes allusions to VA failures, decries poaching of endangered species, recognizes the tragedy of homelessness, and casts an empathetic eye on gay marriage, all at a brisk pace and while maintaining G-rated blood-and-guts hunting scenes. The settings are mostly defined by weather, especially vivid as the homeless man and Bella shiver through a Gunnison, Colorado, winter. The anthropomorphization of Bella may please some readers; others not so much.
More Disney than drama.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7465-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more...
Four close friends, their husbands, their children, their housecleaners—and one application-only magnet school that will drive them all over the brink.
A Boulder-esque town in the Front Range of the Rockies, Crystal, Colorado, is a progressive paradise where four entwined families are raising their children, though death, divorce, and drugs have taken their toll on the group since the moms met at baby swim class years back. The women give each other mugs with friendship quotes each year on the anniversary of that meeting, and they get together every Friday morning for a 4-mile run, "a ritual carved into the flinty stone of their lives…shared since they'd first started trimming up again after the births of their children." Beneath the surface, resentments are already simmering—one family is far wealthier than the others; the widowed mom is a neurotic mess; one of the couples didn't make it through elementary school and he's remarried to "a hot young au pair who was great with the twins [and] a willing partner in mindblowing carnality." Then comes the announcement of a public magnet school for exceptional learners, with a standardized test as the first step in separating the wheat from the chaff. The novel's depiction of the ensuing devolution is grounded in acute social observation—class, race, privilege, woke and libertarian politics—then hits the mark on the details as well. From the bellowing of the dads on the soccer field to the oversharing in the teenager's vlog, down to the names of the kids themselves—twins Aidan and Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury; best friends Emma Z and Emma Q; nerdy chessmaster Xander Frye—Holsinger's (The Invention of Fire, 2015) pitch is close to perfect.
The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more timely, and the Big Little Lies treatment creates a deliciously repulsive and eerily current page-turner.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53496-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.
An absorbing story of a modern marriage framed in Greek mythology.
Groff’s sharply drawn portrait of a marriage begins on a cold Maine beach, with newlyweds “on their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn’t matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands.” This opener ushers in an ambitious, knowing novel besotted with sex—in a kaleidoscope of variety—much more abundant than the commune-dwellers got up to in Groff’s luminous Arcadia(2012). The story centers first on Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, a dashing actor at Vassar, who marries his classmate, flounders, then becomes a famous playwright. Lotto’s name evokes the lottery—and the Fates, as his half of the book is titled. His wife, the imperial and striking Mathilde, takes over the second section, Furies, astir with grief and revenge. The plotting is exquisite, and the sentences hum; Groff writes with a pleasurable, bantering vividness. Her book is smart, albeit with an occasional vibrato of overkill. The author gives this novel a harder edge and darker glow than previous work, echoing Mathilde’s observation, “She was so tired of the old way of telling stories, all those too worn narrative paths, the familiar plot thickets, the fat social novels. She needed something messier, something sharper, something like a bomb going off.” Indeed it is.
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59463-447-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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