Every word rings true in this disturbing demonstration of how hard it is to stop a massacre even when you know it’s coming....
A stark look at one of the tragedies of our time: school shootings.
Potter County deputy sheriff Chip Jeffers, Potter High School resource officer Kim Miller, and guidance counselor LeAnn Dunne agree: Someone’s planning a school shooting. Notes found in the boys’ bathroom remind LeAnn of Columbine. In a pre-emptive attempt to stop trouble, they notify the faculty; Chip calls on prison chaplain/sheriff’s investigator/recovering alcoholic John Jordan (And the Sea Became Blood, 2019, etc.); and Kim and LeAnn compile lists of the students they think most likely to carry out such a horrible crime. The names include Tristan Ward and Denise Royal, arty goth types putting on a pretentious, badly written play, and snarky Mason Nickols and Dakota Emanuel, the only students to make both women's lists. John reasons that the attempt will take place on the day of the play, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. After police officers and teachers search the building and find nothing, the play goes off as planned. That night, at a local bar, a couple of nonalcoholic beers give John the yen for something stronger, and he falls off the wagon. The next morning, explosions and gunshots rock Potter High, and John, arriving eight minutes into the attack, rushes to help Kim, who’s wounded and alone. In the smoke and confusion John and Kim are fired upon by a student who's only trying to help and whom John shoots and critically wounds. Even after an investigation clears John, he can’t forgive himself, and he continues to drink. Despite warnings by his boss and attacks by the press, he won’t give up his attempt to identify the masked killers.
Every word rings true in this disturbing demonstration of how hard it is to stop a massacre even when you know it’s coming. The aftermath is heartbreaking and the ending a real shocker.Pub Date: June 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947606-37-1
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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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