Wooten’s novel is an earnest coming-of-age tale as well as an inventive look at the contested borderland between science and faith.
Teenage Max is every parent’s dream: whip smart, he tutors his classmates in math and chomps at the bit to sign up for college science; a hard worker, he puts in extra hours at the local grocery store to help out his parents; he drives old ladies to church and helps them pay for food out of his meager salary; and he’s a devout Christian who attends his father’s parish every Sunday morning and can cite the Bible chapter and verse. But he’s also headed off to college, and his parents fear that the temptations of university life will change their boy wonder. Wooten’s tale tracks Max’s first year at Cedarbluff, a Christian college in Ohio. At Cedarbluff, Max befriends the Falstaffian Rollo, falls for the pugnacious Julie and battles fellow pastor’s son Brad in scriptural debate. But his most compelling interactions are with Professor Nowak, a physics teacher who tasks each new crop of students with the “Near Impossible Assignment,” a semester-long project intended to challenge and confound. Max’s assignment is simple: magnetize a lead ball. But the experiments he undertakes will bend the laws of nature, test his fledgling faith and upend his life. With Max, Wooten delivers a well-rounded, believable protagonist, and he surrounds his hero with compelling foils and game foes. Wooten’s dialogue is true-to-life, and his feel for pacing and dramatic tension is excellent. However, certain details feel a bit off—Max’s high-school mentee has to teach him how to text, his family has dial-up Internet and he has to take college algebra if he wants to qualify for an advanced physics course. (Most boy geniuses probably knocked algebra out of the park around age 13.) But these are small ripples that barely disturb the flow of this very strong young-adult fiction. Nearly impossible to put down.
Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1612250410
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Mirror
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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