An absorbing, uplifting tale of finding light and self-worth in adversity’s darkest depths.
This debut novel sees an erstwhile homeless man with a history of depression become the basketball coach at a school for mentally ill juvenile offenders.
Mikey Cannon grew up in a racially diverse stretch of Los Angeles and played basketball in games where he was “the only white boy” (“I could set up plays like a pro”). Mikey was 15 years old when his mom died. A year later, he entered the Friedman Psychiatric Hospital suffering severe depression—a condition exacerbated by his dad’s tough love. His dad, a decorated high school basketball coach, considered Mikey his great disappointment. Now, at 25, Mikey has weathered two more hospital stints and spent several years living on the streets. His dad has grudgingly taken him back in, but only if Mikey can hold down a job—as a bus driver at Mary Friedman Alternative High School, an institution attached to the hospital that caters to juvenile offenders. As Mikey drives his bus, he comes to appreciate how much the kids have stacked against them. When circumstances leave him in charge of the basketball team, he sees an opportunity to give them something good in their lives and expunge some of his personal demons. Can Mikey save them through basketball? Gordon writes in the first person, past tense, from Mikey’s perspective, crafting a story much in the vein of the film Stand and Deliver,only more acute. Unlike the movie’s math teacher protagonist played by Edward James Olmos, Mikey is an underdog, and his team is disadvantaged by more than its socioeconomic background. The author’s exploration of mental illness is fearless and without artifice, portraying not only the debilitating effects on those afflicted, but also the trepidation, helplessness, anger, neglect, scorn, and occasional love returned to them by family and strangers. Mikey is an engaging protagonist, and all of his charges emerge as distinct characters. Even stock figures like Mikey’s dad have depth beyond their narrative functions. Throughout, Gordon narrates events in clear, accomplished prose that captures the voice and heart of each player. Readers will find themselves caught up in the journey, cheering for Mikey and his team. The ending, though verging on the saccharine, is extremely well played.
An absorbing, uplifting tale of finding light and self-worth in adversity’s darkest depths.Pub Date: July 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798990103528
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Maxwell Street Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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