A layered and emotionally ambitious fantasy.
In this middle-grade debut novel, a girl learns more about her deceased parents while searching for a local child who’s gone missing.
Young Veronica Curtiss lives with her grandmother on a farm in Little Pine, Texas. Her parents died in a car accident when she was 3, and she dreams of one day escaping her small, boring town. Today’s her 11th birthday, and her best friends, Rita Salazar and Johanna Cobos, give her a charm bracelet. When it later vanishes, her Gram jokes that Los Descarriados, the legendary Mexican cowboy ghosts, took it. Later, at the Fort McCullough Field Day, Johanna’s uncle, Billie George, participates in Civil War reenactments. Someone deflates his horse trailer’s tires, and Rita’s 6-year-old brother, Ramón, blames three men riding burros. Further strangeness occurs when a pair of ravens return Veronica’s bracelet to her—and apologize for snatching it. (“We’re not just pretty; we can talk human,” one says.) Then Ramón is suddenly nowhere to be found. The girls frantically search for him, but Billie George believes that the boy’s father, up from Mexico, has taken him. The ravens, whom Veronica calls Cork and Rackoo, point her toward her own father’s workshop, where he did flight experiments. Could a forgotten invention help her search for Ramón in a way that nobody else can? Although Enck sets her story in 2007, her exploration of xenophobia seems even more relevant in the present day. At one point, for instance, Billie George assumes, without evidence, that Ramón’s Mexican father is not only a kidnapper, but also a thief responsible for local robberies. Genuine thematic grandeur arrives when the local mailman, Howard “Alkali” Moskowitz, tells the girls about the Encyclopӕdia of Useless Things that he’s writing, which includes such concepts as shame and “most guilt.” Veronica’s desire to operate an old invention distracts a bit from the search for Ramón. However, the truth behind Los Descarriados is emotionally rich, particularly when Rita wonders, “Do you know what would make them happy?” Younger readers may need some help understanding the finale, and older ones, if they aren’t too teary-eyed, should oblige.
A layered and emotionally ambitious fantasy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 287
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
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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