Both an engrossing tale and an effective call to action about a rarely discussed minority.
An activist and author explores the plight of African albinos in this story of a young Tanzanian.
Translated from the original Italian, this “work of fiction based on true events” sees the African albino experience through the eyes of a Tanzanian girl named Adimu. Upon first seeing her shockingly white skin, Adimu’s father simply declares: “It has to die.” The prejudice against these Zeru Zerus—or phantoms or nobodies, as they are sometimes called—is so strong that all the other women at the birth recoil, calling the baby a dark omen and demanding that she be abandoned far from the village. But after a shocking test of fate, the infant’s loving grandmother Nkamba is allowed to raise her. Threats lurk constantly in the shadows against the ostracized Adimu and her grandmother; a failed kidnapping attempt leads to the intervention of Charles and Sarah Fielding, a wealthy white couple living on an island. Sarah is smitten with the child and wants to raise her as her own, but like many men in the story, Charles sees the baby as an opportunity. Believed to hold dark magic, the body of an older Zeru Zeru is a commodity that can be sold on the black market for great sums of money—even enough to save Charles’ failing mining company. Gentili’s (I, Maria Bellofiore, 2009) primary goal as the founder of Help African Albinos is to raise awareness for the very real issues of racism and human trafficking affecting people like Adimu, but he has also crafted a compelling novel. The author carefully constructs the superstitious and hostile world of the village but also populates it with several believable and complex inhabitants. He strives to show the difficulty these characters have reconciling their beliefs and motivations with Adimu’s existence as a real person. The multiple dangers that befall the sweet main character provide a surprising amount of suspense and shock while the inner turmoil of Nkamba and Charles offers deep, emotionally charged storylines.
Both an engrossing tale and an effective call to action about a rarely discussed minority.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 282
Publisher: #HelpAfricanAlbinos
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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