Structural flaws can’t undermine the raw power of this stark, timely story about life in the urban underbelly.
West African author mines the hardscrabble life of young inner-city thugs.
The setting for this thin, grim novel is the Velt, a brutal, overcrowded ghetto and home to the notorious Drop Dead Gangsters, scores of high school dropouts and deadly dealers peddling narcotics and automatic weapons. Entrenched in the region’s violence and mayhem are Demus, a straight-A student from an affluent family who sells “Acapulco gold grass” to fit in with his peers, gold-toothed Baker, the youngest of the trio, nicknamed for his love of sweets, and muscular, street-smart Barnes, who deals in heroin and firearms. Though all three boys are shocked at the tragic shooting death of Little Jimmy, a troubled neighborhood teen wanted in several states on robbery charges, Barnes is the one who must return home to face a mother who is suffering from debilitating “black fever disease.” While a potentially lifesaving drug is on the horizon, his mother desperately needs a liver transplant now and, even more upsetting, she’s uninsured. Barnes springs into dangerous action to save her. Meanwhile, Nikolai, the barely legal son of charitable Ukrainian grocer Viktor, has his sights set on law school while his father’s store continues to be prone to a rash of thefts. The two groups collide when Barnes hatches a plan to rob Viktor’s safe. As expected, incredible carnage follows, including some dire consequences for Viktor and Nikolai, but Thomson amazingly manages to tack on a happy ending after the unbridled bloodshed. The result is a mixed effort. Thomson’s ear for street-slang vernacular is effective in bringing his characters to life and creates a chillingly real backdrop. But a series of recurring flashbacks struggle to give the narrative texture, ultimately robbing the story of momentum and much-needed direction.
Structural flaws can’t undermine the raw power of this stark, timely story about life in the urban underbelly.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9646-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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