A relatable female protagonist and a meaningful message about the relationship between hurt and anger.
A grade schooler’s determination to tame a fearful, aggressive pup with love brings both trouble and unexpected change in this children’s novel.
Everything has gone wrong for Samantha “Sammy” Connor since the death of her beloved grandfather Papa Jack. She and her single mom had to move after he died; money is short; and Sammy is messing up at her elementary school. The girl also feels distanced from her mom, an artist who spends a lot of time in her ceramics studio. When Sammy sees chained-up pup Jack being cruelly mistreated by school bully Brian Haydon’s teenage brothers, she persuades her classmate to sell Jack to her, earning the money by reading to an elderly woman at the local seniors’ home. Sammy soon wonders, though, if kindness will be enough to change the barking, lunging, destructive “devil dog” into a loving pet. She comes to see a parallel in Brian’s anger when she witnesses him being denigrated and physically abused by his bad news brothers—and comes up with a plan to rescue him too. But “why was it that when she tried so hard, things kept going wrong?” Jack chews things up, won’t listen, and nips at people. Brian comes to school with bruises and keeps shoving kids and mouthing off to teachers. Then a shockingly violent incident occurs, bringing eventful consequences for Jack, renewed closeness between Sammy and her mom, and the girl’s sad realization that she can’t be Brian’s rescuer. As her mom says, “people have to fix themselves.” In this novel, Brown (Not Yet Summer, 2017, etc.), a prolific author of books for ages 9 and up, offers an affecting portrait of a young girl struggling to recover a sense of stability after a profound loss. Sammy’s ups and downs with her mom, who is caring but self-absorbed with professional and money concerns, ring true. And principal Jeanne Martinez and counselor Mrs. Sovich are sympathetic adults. The story also presents a powerful lesson about the effects of bullying. The ethnicity and race of the characters are not stated, although the book cover shows a young white girl and there is a mention of Sammy’s best friend’s Japanese grandparents.
A relatable female protagonist and a meaningful message about the relationship between hurt and anger.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5447-9935-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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