An engaging, inspiring rise above a traumatic childhood, but it’s dampened by a narrative that’s more sketch than story.
In Bouvier and Clements’ debut novel, Thomas Paul Stanton’s upbringing is a Dickensian nightmare.
Thomas Paul suffers physical and verbal abuse from his absentee father, his mother is mentally ill, and he agonizes over self-loathing spurred by his family life and the ever-growing revelation that he seems different from his peers. Eventually, he realizes he’s gay. He seeks to find answers to his anguish through God and/or religion, but his spiritual yearning is met with conflict, confusion and, ultimately, abuse at the hands of a priest. Similarly, as he seeks acceptance from his family, his need seems all too often to be met with some form of abuse. Before he’s even 3 years old, Thomas Paul witnesses a confusing scene of naked boys “playing” beneath a makeshift tent; then suddenly, one of the boys tries to sexually abuse him—a traumatic incident that gives him recurring nightmares. As his mother’s mental condition deteriorates, Thomas Paul can no longer turn to her for comfort. Just as he begins to accept who he is, the teenage Thomas Paul meets a priest, whom he admires. The priest invites him to his home, where he sexually abuses him. Only years later, in intensive therapy, does Thomas Paul come to understand that he was sexually abused by the priest. Readers who have suffered any kind of abuse will surely identify with this novel, which reads very much like a memoir; thankfully, it has a positive resolution. While the book tells a powerful story, too often the authors tell rather than show. For instance, a good part of the novel is spent with Thomas Paul in a therapist’s office, where he relates traumatic events from his past. Therapy is a crucial part of Thomas Paul’s ultimate recovery, but presenting key parts of the story in this manner turns the book into more of an extended summary than a complete story. Furthermore, sloppy copy editing mistakes—missing quotation marks and paragraph indentations, for example—mar the presentation.
An engaging, inspiring rise above a traumatic childhood, but it’s dampened by a narrative that’s more sketch than story.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985663902
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Tall Trees LLC.
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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