A skillful exploration of a tween boy’s coming-of-age.
During summer vacation, a boy faces difficult choices during a club initiation in Greene’s debut YA novel.
School is almost over, and narrator Wills and his best friend, Andrew Wyler, have plans for a new club called the Annelids, named after worms that Andrew finds interesting. The invitation list includes the boys’ closest friends, but inevitably, Wills’ older brother, Taylor, and Taylor’s friend Strat Sherwood find out about the club. They insist on being part of it, too, but they’re bullies who have a tendency to take things over. “Having Taylor involved in this club is not making my life any easier,” thinks Wills. At the first club meeting, Wills makes a suggestion for an initiation: “How about we dig a really deep tunnel and make like the worms do, join our powerful brothers underground?” Taylor and Strat seize on this idea, liking the thought of a bravery test to weed out the weak. The boys organize and carry out their plan, finding a good location in the pine woods, gathering tools and plywood, making scale drawings, and digging out stones and roots. During this process, Wills finds Andrew’s journal and discovers that his friend has severe asthma, but he keeps the secret, as his friend is already picked on enough. When the tunnel is complete, the initiation rites will test the boys’ courage and resourcefulness. Greene ably presents the contradictions and difficulties of growing up from a boy’s point of view. Wills and his friends are at an age when girls are still “others” and boys fear looking weak more than anything else in the world. Wills, however, is kind; noticing his mother’s laugh lines, he thinks, “It’s my mission to get her laughing as often as I can.” Still, pressure from the older, challenging boys gets to Wills; he has to admit that he’s been a jerk sometimes, that Andrew has reason not to trust him with the news of his diagnosis, and that maybe he’s become too much like his brother. The way that Wills navigates his competing instincts is realistic and moving.
A skillful exploration of a tween boy’s coming-of-age.Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-945980-57-5
Page Count: 134
Publisher: North Country Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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