A warm, sometimes-silly Christmas story.
An angel’s adventures serve to illustrate the spirit of Christmas.
Debut author Cuccia’s trilogy follows the life of Shiny, an angel. The book’s opening story, “A Christmas Tale,” borrows heavily from It’s a Wonderful Life, and is the strongest of the collection. As in Frank Capra’s film, an angel is dispatched to Earth on Christmas Eve to bring goodwill to men in order to win his wings. That angel is Shiny, a character named for his bald head who is often mocked by his fellow angels for his lack of both hair and wings. But after delivering a message from God to a blind man, a child in a hospital, and an old man in the midst of a crisis of faith, Shiny rises from the laughingstock of heaven to an archangel respected by his peers. The second story, “A Christmas Lullaby,” ventures into more theological territory. Jesus sends Shiny from the Garden of Eden to “eternity past” in order to facilitate Jesus’ own birth at the Annunciation. The section successfully draws the reader’s attention to the holiday’s religious history, but it’s overloaded with scriptural trivia. We learn, for example, that the seraphim guarding the gates of Eden have six wings instead of two. The work rebounds in the third section, “A Christmas Miracle,” where Shiny and his new friends inspire a religious revival. The excessive scriptural digressions and cringe-worthy puns—“These aren’t just any sunglasses, these are S-o-n-glasses”—might drive some readers back to the classics, but Christian families looking for something new will find a heartwarming book for the holidays.
A warm, sometimes-silly Christmas story.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-4392-8
Page Count: 210
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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