PLB 0-7868-2401-8 In a work of science fiction, Lasky (A Brilliant Streak, 1998, etc.) tackles both the morality of human cloning and the potential for people to cover their tracks through the time-honored tradition of manipulating language. Darci has grown up believing she’s a “Genhant,” or genetically enhanced human, one of the privileged people in a future society where all babies are to some degree genetically planned. She doesn’t understand why she is attracted to the “Originals,” people with only minimal genetic alterations, or why she is interested in the meaning of words others take for granted. Through careful plotting, Lasky throws readers some intriguing “ethical” bones to chew on, e.g., when Darci comes face to face with her own clone, are they exactly the same person or is there some intrinsic difference’something like a soul? Can language cover up as well as it can explain? These intellectual tussles will foster discussion, especially since the issues are already part of the public forum. If the story has weaknesses, it is in some of its assumptions, e.g., that hundreds of years into the future, societal structures such as the nuclear family will still exist, when even today it seems to be crumbling. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7868-0459-9
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
Envisioning a nightmarish future in which children deemed small or otherwise defective are worked to death breaking rocks, and the constant rain is so acid it raises blisters, Rapp (Buffalo Tree, 1997) crafts another lurid shocker. Learning that the coffin maker who has housed her is about to sell her off, 11-year-old Whensday, also known as “33” for the tattoo on her arm, sneaks away. Cataloging the disease, excrement, blood, vomit, mutations, slime, and general filth with matter-of-fact bluntness, she takes temporary shelter from the rain with Honeycut, a huge, dimwitted teenager; tries to escape with another fugitive who dies of ebola-like Blackfrost; is raped by an officer of the brutal local militia; and sees Honeycut stoned to death for killing the man. Whensday tells her tale in a colorful idiolect, mixing dreams and scatological exchanges with Oakley, a tough-talking younger friend. Certain she’s about to die since she can’t stop vomiting, Whensday is rescued by a hidden community of women who clean her up and tell her she’s pregnant—a happy ending, under the circumstances. Often gripping, sometimes blackly funny in a squalid way, this will remind readers of Russell Hoban’s Ridley Walker (1980) and other tales of post-apocalyptic devastation. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1999
ISBN: 1-886910-42-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Despite the title, Hite’s latest is no sci-fi, futuristic effort, but a modern novel with a first-person narrative with echoes of such classics as Catcher in the Rye. Cecil lives in “historic” Bricksburg, a Virginia backwater made up of colorful eccentrics, where the biggest excitement is over who altered a local sign to read “Welcome to Hysteric Pricksburg.” Such vandalism is of felony proportions, and the leading suspect happens to be Cecil’s best friend, Isaac, who maintains his innocence as well as his cool. Throw in Cecil’s romantic struggle between the town’s fickle bombshell and the girl-next-door, Isaac’s younger sister, and this has all the makings of a conventional read; it transcends such labels with the addition of Hite’s keen sense of the absurd, Cecil’s mature, witty observations and his morose pronouncements about life on Earth. Cecil’s ongoing discourse on the problems of the universe grow trying, but readers will relate to—and laugh over—his simple struggle to find his way. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5055-8
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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