An entertaining and insightful tale that readers of all ages will savor.
In White’s (Windows on the World, 2011, etc.) YA sci-fi adventure, a 13-year-old boy and his father escape a dystopian world by joining a community of tiny people.
Young Zert Cage, in Low City DC in 2083, earns respect by engaging in trash wars with otherteenson the streets. This involves the use of garbage-propelling rifles, which gets him arrested for felony vandalism. His widower father, Jack, is already worried about the latest epidemic of Superpox. Jack received his vaccination when it was affordable, but he can’t afford the current price of vaccinating Zert. Now, he fears that his son will be put in “Teen-Jail” for anywhere from six months to 20 years. The only solution, it seems, comes from Jack’s brother-in-law, Marin Bluegar, a celebrity due to his appearances on the adventureholoshow New Worlds. Marin wants Jack and Zert to take part in a top-secret project in which they’ll undergo a process called “minimizing,” which will shrink them to the size of thumbs. They have to leave everything in their old lives behind, but as a result, Zert will get vaccinated and avoid incarceration. Sadly, adjusting to life in a small settlement of shrunken people called Paradise proves difficult, due to its insect-based cuisine and locals who ostracize newcomers. At the center of White’s absorbing story is a teen who doesn’t fit in; for example, Zert’s peers in Paradise were born there, so they’ve never had electricity and don’t believe the boy’s accounts of amazing technology. The author also adds an element of suspense with the constant threat of the community kicking Jack and Zert out, as they only have three weeks to prove their worth. The novel even supplies a touch of mystery, as well; it turns out that Marin may have withheld information regarding the minimizing project, and Paradise residents often mention Abbot, the last outsider they banished. Along the way, White ably details the giant insects of Paradise, both as potential dangers and as ingredients in delicacies such as cricket soup. The occasional animal hybrids are delightful, too—especially a “bassetduck” that “quarks.”
An entertaining and insightful tale that readers of all ages will savor.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63299-194-2
Page Count: 266
Publisher: River Grove Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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