A whimsical adventure that promotes individuality and self-acceptance.
In this fantasy sequel, a mysterious stone leads a young girl from her quiet life in suburban Hartsdale, New York, to the Icelandic home of an ancient mythical being.
Elika is embarrassed by her Icelandic name, her yellow-green eyes, and, above all, her eccentric Aunt Caroline. In Spudich’s (The Amber Giant, 2017, etc.) first novel in the series, Caroline befriended a yetilike creature in the Himalayas when she was a young girl; she’s now a geology professor who still frequently visits her hairy friend. Just after Elika’s 13th birthday, the girl begins hearing a high voice calling out in her dreams. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she notices that the Fire and Ice quartz that her mother brought her from Iceland is glowing. She consults with Caroline, who thinks that the crystal may have a connection to another mythical creature. With her family’s support, she and her aunt travel to Iceland to find it. Elika locates the Ice Giant, who immediately takes a liking to her, insisting that she stay in her frozen cave. The girl must figure out a way to return to her family without making her newfound friend feel abandoned. Although this story is closely connected to The Amber Giant, it can easily be read as a stand-alone. Spudich uses straightforward language that’s well suited to young audiences. Her descriptions of Icelandic landscapes are filled with ethereal beauty, as when Elika marvels at how “Sunlight shone through the ice, filling it with turquoise light.” Later, she writes: “They stopped by a flow of ice that looked like a river frozen in time.” Spudich’s interpretation of the mythological Ice Giant will certainly pique readers’ interest. However, the story is rather brief, and readers may wish that there were more material to explore. Still, considering the brevity of the book, Elika’s character development is considerable; the journey to Iceland helps her overcome her insecurities and deepens her relationship with her aunt. Through conversation with the centuries-old Giant, she realizes the importance of her cultural heritage and hopes to learn more about her family’s history.
A whimsical adventure that promotes individuality and self-acceptance.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947854-47-5
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Handersen Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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