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ISLE OF MISFORTUNE

Name: ISLE OF MISFORTUNE
Author: Geoffrey Leavenworth
ISBN: 0-87565-269-7

by Geoffrey Leavenworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2003

Leavenworth builds up tension gradually and deliberately, giving a sharp edge of eeriness to what could have been a...

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Fictionalized autobiography about a Texas writer’s increasingly desperate attempts to save himself and his family from a psychotic stalker.

Leavenworth’s first novel begins with a true, bizarre, and terrifying incident that obsessed him for years: One night he answered the door of his Galveston home and met a perfect stranger who shot him in the chest with a .25 caliber pistol. He makes this the starting point of a story about Gordon O’Connor, a freelance journalist and family man, who struggles to unravel the mystery of a similar incident. Naturally shaken by the attack, Gordon flees with his wife and two sons to their beach house, only to be awakened in the middle of the night by a telephone call from his attacker. The police, at first, are not only unhelpful but downright suspicious, asking why Gordon never reported the earlier acts of vandalism (broken windows, etc.) that he now believes were committed by his stalker, and privately questioning whether Gordon is involved in some sort of hoax. But Gordon’s father-in-law, Pat Hayes, an ex-FBI agent with strong political connections, brings in some of his old friends to help sort out the case and they soon come up with—very little. The uncertainty of the situation makes Gordon increasingly paranoid, and he soon finds reasons to suspect everyone around him—from his brother-in-law Allen (a drug addict with a criminal record) to his father-in-law Pat (who concealed Allen’s criminal record from Gordon) right up to his wife Ana (whom Gordon begins to think is having an affair). As his life veers out of control, Gordon takes increasingly desperate measures to find security, but nothing succeeds—until he finally confronts his attacker face-to-face. By this time, his story has become as much a tale of psychological terror as criminal suspense.

Leavenworth builds up tension gradually and deliberately, giving a sharp edge of eeriness to what could have been a run-of-the-mill thriller.

Pub Date: April 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-87565-269-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
BRAND UNDER FIRE
by Jeff Robert Hunt with Geoffrey Leavenworth

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946

ISBN: 0452277507

Page Count: 114

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.