A compelling journey of self-discovery with a voice that rings true.
In Byington’s debut YA novel, a girl faces obstacles as she trains for the 1968 Boston Marathon—including epilepsy, sexism, and her parents’ secret.
Faye Smith is 15 in the fall of 1967 as she begins attending another new school. This time it’s in Valencia, Florida, where her father now works in an orange grove. Faye loves running and hopes someday to teach physical education. A University of Florida track coach is impressed enough to scout her, but her parents quash her hopes; they’re also furious that her recent track-meet performance wound up on TV. They can’t call attention to themselves, Faye’s mother says, because her father was wrongly accused of doing something illegal. “Honey, college isn’t for people like us,” her mom also says. “We’re blue-collar workers.” In addition, she worries that Faye’s training could trigger another epileptic seizure. Faye becomes even more determined to run in the Boston Marathon, even after a bully tries to run her over while she’s running outside. Into the new year, Faye saves money and keeps training—but old nightmares and odd flashes of memory begin surfacing, including the image of a woman who seems familiar. Increasingly certain that her parents are lying to her, Faye starts to investigate the past. Along the way, she runs harder than ever toward the marathon—and the truth. In her debut novel, Byington offers a well-written, exciting story featuring an admirably resilient heroine who’s both strong and vulnerable, by turns. The South of the late 1960s provides an effective backdrop for Faye’s experiences; at one point, for instance, her volunteer coach, a black man, puts himself in real danger—simply by running with Faye and another white girl in public. Byington nicely balances the more dramatic events with scenes of Faye’s everyday teenage life—learning to drive and having a first date and first kiss. The novel’s secrets unravel convincingly, although Faye frustratingly ignores a letter that could have explained everything earlier. When the mystery is finally solved, the teenager shows herself to be thoughtful and mature about some very thorny matters.
A compelling journey of self-discovery with a voice that rings true.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-986281-84-3
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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