A quirky nocturnal visitor offers a confused 16-year-old the superpower of his choice.
Everything is suddenly different for Skipper, a New York City teenager; less than a week after his mother’s death from cancer, he wakes up in a hospital bed after suffering what his doctor calls a “life threatening” asthma attack and finds that someone is in the room with him—a strange man wearing a sombrero, a horizontally striped suit and mismatched socks. The odd stranger introduces himself as Hal and offers Skipper any superpower he would like, under the assumption that he will use it to make the world a better place. Unsure which power to choose, Skipper agrees to think about it and drifts off to sleep, bringing the surreal conversation to an end. The next day, Skipper isn’t sure whether the encounter had actually taken place, or whether it was brought on by the strong asthma medication his overprotective mother had always been wary of his using. But when Hal continues to visit Skipper at night, the teenager mulls over his superpower options in earnest. Meanwhile, Skipper, along with his best friends Albert and John, must negotiate all the social and physical hazards that come with being the relatively uncool kids at their exclusive private school, while Skipper deals with a crabby, emotionally distant father, an eager love interest and, most importantly of all, the freedom and responsibility that comes with life without his overprotective mother. This book presents a humorous yet poignant account of a young man’s first brush with adulthood, featuring well-rendered, believable characters. The prickly relationship between Skipper and his father is especially well done, and the scenes between Skipper and Hal utilize peculiar dream logic to good effect. There are moments that are slightly out of place—an encounter with a bully at a dance, for instance—but overall the plot flows nicely. The book’s simple prose and lighthearted tone make it a pleasure to read, and, combined with its universal themes, suitable for young readers and adults alike. The fact that the humor tends toward the goofy only adds to this book’s considerable charm. A touching, funny novel perfectly suited for anyone who is or ever has been a teenager.
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461170167
Page Count: 249
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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