The second installment in a Godfather-level crime saga set in the Ottoman Empire.
Altan, a prominent Turkish journalist, has been locked up by his authoritarian government since 2016. His prison memoir, I Will Never See the World Again (2019), is a master class in courage in a time of corruption. This novel, published in Turkish in 2001, is the second book in The Ottoman Quartet, a complex story involving authoritarianism, freedom of speech, political philosophy, and sexual politics, taking place during a time of open warfare in the early 20th century. Our guide to the story is Osman, a middle-aged man living in contemporary Turkey who can see and hear the dead, or at least personal versions of his family history from a century ago. He can't really admit that to anyone, so he keeps to himself as much as he can. In Altan's version of his country's history, there are a lot of powerful players. His Majesty the Sultan Abdulhamid II, who has reigned since 1876, always poses a threat. Reşit Pasha, the personal doctor to the sultan, is a fearful but also dangerous character, and there are also a variety of children, relatives, and disciples all working their own angles. That's not to mention a few menacing women, including Mihrişah Sultan, an Ottoman princess. The book is comparable to Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games (2006), not only in terms of its scope, but also in the depths of its characterization and the visceral tensions between characters. Osman’s connection with the dead brings in that little touch of magical realism that makes things cool. The political war games that constantly surround the crown give everything an extra bit of palpable menace. This book is just as piercing as the first in the series, Like a Sword Wound (2018), and readers would be well served by reading that one first.
An ambitious and intelligent thriller about love and war.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60945-619-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
A fictional account of the agony and ecstasy of making a movie, from someone who’d know.
For his sprightly debut novel, actor/writer/national treasure Hanks—author of the story collection Uncommon Type, 2017—imagines the making of Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall, a mashup of Marvel-esque superhero fare, war story, and artsy melodrama. The movie’s concept seems like an unworkable, even bad idea, which is part of the point—Hanks stresses the notion that successful movies aren’t just a matter of story but the people who make them. So he’s assembled an engrossing cast of characters: Bob Falls, the World War II vet who served as a flamethrower in the Pacific theater and became a PTSD–struck biker; Robby Andersen, the nephew who turned him into alternative-comix antihero Firefall; Bill Johnson, the well-decorated Spielberg-ian director who acquires the Firefall property and writes the script; and the small army of actors, assistants, and technicians charged with shooting the film in the Northern California town of Lone Butte—on time, lest morale collapse and the budget inflate. Hanks ably depicts how easily things derail. The male lead’s ego wrecks the shooting schedule. A stray social media post complicates security. On-set flirtations threaten a marriage. But the novel reflects the sunny stick-to-it-iveness of many of Hanks’ roles, and his central thesis is that every movie’s true hero is anybody who reduces friction. To that end, his most enchanting and best-drawn characters are the director’s assistant, Al Mac-Teer (full name Allicia), and Ynez Gonzalez-Cruz, a ride-share driver with no movie experience but a knack for problem-solving. “Most of the film business is done by meeting folks,” one character says, and Hanks suggests that meeting the right people—and being kind to them—is half the battle of successful moviemaking. Overly romantic? Consider the source. Regardless, it’s a well-turned tale of a Hollywood (maybe) success. (Sikoryak illustrates some comic-book pages related to the Firefall backstory and film.)
A loose-limbed, bighearted Hollywood yarn.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9780525655596
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION
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