One wishes for a slightly—ahem—tastier and less flabby gathering. But if zombies are your cup of meat, this is just the...
“They sat like people asleep with their eyes open, staring, but seeing nothing.” A Tea Party rally? No, no: A clutch of zombies, the stars of Penzler’s (The Vampire Archives, 2009, etc.) latest mega-anthology.
Zombies are the latest big thing, of course, at least in filmdom. But whereas the zombies of the movies now move quickly, eat all body parts indiscriminately and explode very nicely, the zombies of literature (pulp, mostly) are a slower and ever so slightly more stately bunch of ghouls. Consider Penzler’s starting point, a story from 1929 called “Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields,” in which you’d have to look very hard to see that those unseeing, eyes-wide-open folks were truly the walking undead and not, in fact, merely suffering from a bad hangover after one too many mojitos. Many of Penzler’s selections are variations on a very limited theme: A traveler to some torrid country down Caribbean way finds, to his or her horror, that the locals are creepy-crawly types, “grayed to the hue of putrescent bone,” as writes one Arthur Leo Zagat—whether a forerunner of the restaurant guides, alas, we do not know, though the author of that starting-point tale did, Penzler delights in telling us, indulge in cannibalism. Some of Penzler’s choices are arguable: Sure, Guy De Maupassant’s story “Was It a Dream?” sports a mention of a poor schmo walking “with extended arms, knocking against the tombs,” but it’s a stretch, probably, to include it in the canon of zombie lit. Inarguably zombielicious, though, are Karen Haber’s latter-day tale “Red Angels,” with its sly good humor (“The best artist in Haiti is some sort of undead thing that just drools and paints”), Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg’s very strange short story “The Song the Zombie Sang,” and H.P. Lovecraft’s spooky (natch) confection “Herbert West—Reanimator.” On the down side, Penzler does not satisfactorily explain his criteria for inclusion, and there are a couple of iffy picks, including the endless “Z is for Zombie”; his introduction is glancing, and some fine recent tales (notably Max Brooks’ World War Z) go unnoticed.
One wishes for a slightly—ahem—tastier and less flabby gathering. But if zombies are your cup of meat, this is just the thing.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-74089-2
Page Count: 827
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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