by Joyce Carol Oates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 1996
Oates's zillionth novel (or, more properly, long story) once again explores the familiar territories of rural upstate New York and endangered preadolescence with a concentrated intensity that earns it a place alongside her superb (and underrated) novella I Lock My Door Upon Myself (1990). Told in alternating first- and second-person narratives, the story is about the disturbingly memorable summer when Il-year-old Josie and her adventurous mother leave Josie's father to go live with Aunt Ester in "the Reverend's house" on Trinity Street in Ransomville ("a country town where everyone went to church but no one much believed in God"). The symbolic provenance is thus established early on—and it grows stronger as the lonely Josie's fascination with her adult cousin Jared, a theology student being groomed to continue his family's long tradition of providing ministers for the Presbyterian church, possesses her imagination. Succumbing to Jared's hypnotic commands, Josie is led to the threshold of full sexual experience—and something rather worse—before the summer abruptly climaxes and her education in adult feeling culminates in a transformation that supersedes Jared's yearnings. Oates tells this essentially familiar tale through vivid figurative language and sharp contrasts. The threatening presences of a huge black snake, a predatory black hawk, and—most ingeniously—multiple images of Jesus on the walls of Jared's study provide striking objective correlatives to Josie's fortuitous submergence in a fear that, she discovers, can save one's life. And there's a brilliantly manipulated parallel between the confident, mysterious sexuality flaunted by Josie's strong-willed mother Delia and Josie's own furtive initiation into the conundrums of sex. The humid, seductive ambiance of Josie's dangerous summer is evoked with carefully chosen and skillfully understated details. Oates at her best—and a happy reminder that she remains one of our foremost chroniclers of childhood's awakening and woman's fate.
Pub Date: Aug. 9, 1996
ISBN: 0-88001-457-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
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by Joyce Carol Oates ; edited by Greg Johnson
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Margaret Atwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
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New York Times Bestseller
Booker Prize Winner
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston
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SEEN & HEARD
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