Thomas (Doing Time, 1997, etc.) writes an exposé on Hollywood, stardom, and the broadcasting media in another hip, cutting-edge story of conflicted youth. Good-looking, wannabe journalist Patrick Sheridan’s coming-of-age begins when the high-school senior leaves the small-town, Bible-toting world of Doggett, Texas, to become an ace reporter for a direct-to-the-classroom news show (modeled after the real-life Channel One) in Los Angeles. Packing as much punch and as many plots as Chris Crutcher, Thomas takes Patrick through first love, first sex (with a television star), first experiences with drugs and getting drunk, as well as discovering the mystery behind his adoption (an estranged, also-adopted sister turns out to be his birth mother). These stories are set against the typically superficial backdrop of a slick news show where looks earn Patrick a high profile beneath the ten-gallon hat he’s made to wear. The Texas innocent soon experiences the disintegration of his ideals and beliefs; when Patrick lands in Ireland on assignment, he drops out of sight and wends his way to an ancestor’s hometown of Kilbeg. The final fifth of the book focuses on a more cynical Patrick searching for answers; it’s a little disappointing when he’s shipped back to Texas without enlightenment. Thomas covers a lot of territory, and Patrick’s journeys of the heart are as compelling as his sincere attempts to do the right thing, but readers should be prepared for a raw, ambiguous conclusion. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-80957-3
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
An eighth grader discovers five schoolmates with psychic powers in this amateurish effort from Lubar. Martin, who was expelled from every other junior high in six counties for mouthing off, is consigned to prison-like Edgeview Alternative School, along with other violent or nerdy teens deemed hopeless misfits. While trying to avoid both the ready fists of hulking bully Lester Bloodbath and the shock therapy meted out by Principal Davis, he meets Torchy, who can start fires without matches or lighters, Cheater Woo, whose test answers are always identical to someone else’s, and several others with odd, unconscious talents. Interspersing Martin’s tediously self-analytical narrative with flat attempts at humor, trite student essays, repetitive memos to faculty, and mawkish letters from home, Lugar draws the tale to a paradoxical climax in which the self-styled “psi five” scuttle Bloodbath’s plot to close the school down, but then do their best to earn releases. After realizing that he is psychic, able to read people’s deepest fears and hopes, Martin abruptly acquires a sense of responsibility and resolves never to abuse his talent. Padded with aimless subplots and earnest efforts to drum up sympathy for the one-dimensional cast’s brutal bullies and ineffectual teachers, this contrived story is a weak alternative to Stephanie Tolan’s Welcome to the Ark (1996) or Willo Davis Roberts’s The Girl with the Silver Eyes (1980). (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86646-1
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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