A violent, raunchy story in which the sacred and profane manifest with supremely absurd humor.
From avant-garde filmmaker and novelist Jodorowsky (Where the Bird Sings Best, 2015, etc.), a picaresque tale driven by metamorphosis and travels between space-time dimensions.
After Crabby, a prickly, hunchbacked, acid-voiced teenager, loses her father and is kicked out by her mother, she embarks on a “tour of Chile, a country as long, thin, and foreign as her [Lithuanian Jewish] father.” She makes a living selling adulterated cocaine until a storm of biblical proportions washes up Albina, a beautiful albino giantess being chased by Himalayan monks. Crabby saves Albina, feeling maternal toward her. Yet they establish a club in which Albina dances naked before miners stricken with sexual desire and religious ecstasy. Unfortunately, Albina suffers from an illness that, during moonlight, transforms her into a dog in heat. When she is threatened by men and bites them, they too are infected, and all become overcome with animalistic desire. Drumfoot, a corrupt cop who tries to take advantage of Albina using Crabby’s criminal past as blackmail, falls victim to her bite. Across enormous rocky deserts, he pursues the duo, who are joined by a helpful hat-making dwarf torn in his love between the two women. Bizarre similes add to the carnivalesque atmosphere throughout. The whites of oglers’ eyes are “like unconscious pelicans,” and passing clouds are “like seagulls with rickets.” In their quest for an antidote to Albina’s canine disease, they encounter an Edenic hidden jungle where ancient Incan warriors and a witch doctor live. Each character mutates in some regard, between dog and human, ugliness and beauty, mortal and deity. Albina’s transformation is the most cosmic, and her origin story and subsequent quest whirl off into mysterious if occasionally repetitive territory, a mélange of Zen Buddhism, Inca origin myths, and Christianity.
A violent, raunchy story in which the sacred and profane manifest with supremely absurd humor.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63206-054-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Bohjalian’s (Secrets of Eden, 2010, etc.) latest effort finds its dark magick in a coven of herbalists, ghosts from an air crash and the troubled history of a derelict Victorian house.
Chip Linton was an experienced pilot for a regional airline, but the aircraft he was flying one sunny August day hit a flock of geese upon takeoff. Chip’s chance to duplicate the heroic flying skills of Sully Sullenberger and the miracle landing on the Hudson River are lost to a rogue wave in the middle of Lake Champlain. Thirty-nine people died during the emergency landing. Until that day, Chip’s life had been the American dream: a profession he loved; a beautiful wife with a successful law practice; adored 10-year-old twin daughters. Now Chip fights posttraumatic stress and has crashed into clinical depression. Emily Linton decides the family needs a new start. She persuades Chip to move to the White Mountains of New Hampshire where she’s found a gingerbread-trimmed house crying for restoration. Emily joins a local law firm. The twins, Hallie and Garnet, try to fit in at school. And Chip goes to work remodeling the house, right down to obsessing over a door in the basement sealed by 39 carriage bolts. Chip, haunted by victims of the crash, wonders if the bolts are macabre symbols for the 39 dead. Like the Lintons, numerous houses around the small town have greenhouses, each owned and lovingly maintained by one of the herbalists. And the herbalists are especially interested in the Lintons’ twin daughters. The narrative develops an aura of malevolence early on, but perhaps too slowly for some horror fans. Many characters, especially all but one of the herbalists, seem one-dimensional. Some plot points are unresolved or take odd turns, perhaps in anticipation of a sequel. Chip’s story is the most compelling. It's presented in the second person and closely parallels the fugue state that sometimes haunts those with depression.
A practical magick horror story with a not-entirely-satisfying resolution.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-39499-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
A spate of grisly stakings sends shock waves though L.A.’s vampire community.
Madison Rose (Murder in Vein, 2010, etc.) is slowly adjusting to her new life working for Samuel La Croix and the California Vampire Council. Living Box-and-Cox–style with Doug and Dodie Deadham, Madison is free to attend classes at the local community college, go jogging or laze around the pool while her vampire hosts spend the daylight hours sacked out. But one morning her solitude is shattered by the sight of a body in the pool, pierced by a sharp stake. The young vampire, who turns out to be merely wounded, tells a tale when he recovers of a nearby castle filled with vampires and their human consorts leading libertine lives under the eye of a mysterious vampire known only as “Lady.” As more staked vampires turn up, the Council moves quickly to find their source, since any notice by the police or press would reveal their secret lives to the public. Madison has her own ideas. Through a Southern California realtor, she locates a secluded property that just might be Lady’s castle. She also turns to fellow “beater” Mike Notchey, an L.A. cop who’s helped Samuel and the Council before. But Notchey’s attitude to the vamp world has become complicated since his friendship with Madison. As she struggles to walk the fine line between the living and the undead, Madison learns to balance her human feelings for those who nurture and protect her with caution around those whose nature places them beyond the reach of human law. Although killing the undead is no joke, this second entry in Jaffarian’s latest series offers both humor and heart.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7387-2312-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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