Vibrant stories that should amuse readers who love valiant dogs.
Antijo relates the heroic and often funny adventures of a family of Labrador retrievers in this debut book.
“There are prodigies in the dog world,” the author states in the preface to this collection of interconnected stories. Several of those canine geniuses just happen to be the ancestors of Deuce Clarence Jones, a purebred chocolate Lab. Although the dogs’ names are all real, their escapades are fictional. The first tale relates how Bubbling Bedouine, the Finnish national champion, escapes from the World Global Dog Show to woo Tendercare Muskelunge Debbie, a black Lab. Her chocolate puppies come as quite a surprise to her owners. Subsequent yarns follow one of their puppies, Tendercare Bubbling “Bucky” Buckeye, and then his puppy, Skaggs Westwood Gus. The animals’ monikers may be a mouthful, but the human characters also sport grandiose names, such as Eustis Izzielustus, a failed dog handler–turned-deckhand, and Robbier Rafferty, an unlucky bank robber. These lighthearted stories are bound to elicit more than a few laughs as they showcase the felicitous qualities and bravery of these dogs; Bucky uses his powerful nose to sniff out a thief on a plane, and Gus rescues the hapless Eustis when he falls overboard. The tales take the reader from the Snow Hotel, where getting out of bed without slippers can result in getting stuck to the icy floor, to Niagara Falls on April Fools’ Day, when daredevils are allowed to jump over the falls or ride down them in a barrel. Antijo shares intriguing details about breeding and showing champion dogs as well as captaining a cargo ship, running a fishing trawler, and even collecting pollen for drug companies. The variety of situations holds the reader’s interest, although the text can sometimes veer toward overexplanation and become repetitive, a minor flaw. The first in a series, the book ends with the arrival of Deuce Clarence Jones and a slight cliffhanger.
Vibrant stories that should amuse readers who love valiant dogs.Pub Date: June 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4834-5171-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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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