by John Ajvide Lindqvist ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2012
The story is complicated, and it doesn’t always add up. When it does, though, it’s enough to make you put your fingers over...
Another atmospheric neogothic yarn, drenched in Scandinavian anxiety and lots of gore, by horror-meister Lindqvist (Handling the Undead, 2010, etc.).
Not overtly creepy at first, at least not in the spine-tingling way of Lindqvist’s debut, the great Let Me In (2007), this latest outing takes its time building up a head of steam—or, better, a head of extremely bad vibes. Lennart Cederström, folksinger, musicologist and amateur mycologist, is wandering about in a boreal forest looking for chanterelles, that being the sort of thing one does in a socialist paradise. He finds, instead, a small, shallow grave and inside it, “a baby girl, just a few days or weeks old.” Lennart rescues the baby, noting that her crying was like nothing his attentive ears had ever taken in—and pitched at a perfect E, “an E that rang like a bell and made the leaves quiver and the birds fly up from the trees.” You’ll be forgiven for wanting to tell Lennart, right now, to run away, since a baby so vocally equipped is likely to have other eldritch powers; but he does not run, and instead, he hides the baby away in the depths of his well-oiled and well-scrubbed apartment, where he lives with his dissatisfied, adulterous wife. They have a creepy kid already, but he’s been living away from home for years. “At some point during Jerry’s worst years, Lennart had wished his son dead,” Lindqvist writes, meaningfully. When the mayhem begins and the blood starts spurting, things do indeed move in fatal directions. But there’s more than mere mass murder in these pages; in between spasms of the supernatural, Lindqvist charts the parallel transformation of a lonely teenage girl whom Theres, now a singing sensation, has taken it upon herself to protect. Teenage angst, psychopathy, Eurovision and wild wolves: What more could you want?
The story is complicated, and it doesn’t always add up. When it does, though, it’s enough to make you put your fingers over your eyes. Good, spooky fun.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-62051-6
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
by John Ajvide Lindqvist translated by Marlaine Delargy
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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