Between the book references and the idyllic setting, readers won’t want to leave Broken Wheel, either.
In this sleepy charmer, a Swedish bookseller finds friendship, love, and more books in the small town of Broken Wheel, Iowa.
Sara Lindqvist has barely left the airport when she learns from the local townspeople that her longtime American pen pal, Amy Harris, has died. Too disappointed to catch a return flight home, Sara reluctantly stays at Amy’s house, which the deceased woman’s neighbors have already cleaned and stocked with food for Sara’s arrival. Though its population is dwindling, Broken Wheel is endearingly quaint. The residents barter for what they need, and much of Sara’s time is spent trying to overcome the oppressive niceness of nosy neighbors who won’t even let her pay for her own drinks at the town’s only bar, much less pay rent on Amy’s house. Sara didn’t have much going on in her life prior to landing in the middle of nowhere, so she's blissfully unaware that her thirst for adventure has led her to an adventure desert. But the sweetness that ensues makes up for the plot’s ambling pace. Desperate for something to do, Sara uses Amy’s book collection—a hodgepodge of classic literature, chick lit, and even erotica—to turn an abandoned hardware store into a neighborhood bookstore. Her thank-you gift to the townspeople quickly becomes a tourist attraction, turning Broken Wheel into a hotbed of romance and progressive ideas. As Sara learns her neighbors’ secrets through Amy’s books, Amy lives on in old letters that fill in the missing details. Sara's time in Iowa is limited, but her new friends suspect that if she and her neighbor Tom can admit their feelings for each other, she might be there for good.
Between the book references and the idyllic setting, readers won’t want to leave Broken Wheel, either.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2344-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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