Pride of place in this second collection of ten stories by Dark (Naked to the Waist, 1991) is given to a tale that has already become something of a contemporary classic. The title piece (successfully adapted for TV) portrays the restrained sorrow of a mother who cares for her adult son as he’s dying from AIDS, and her eventual realization that he—not her buttoned-up cold fish of a husband—has been “the love of her life." It’s the most immediately arresting, though not nearly the most accomplished, of Dark’s knowing, if occasionally slightly clichÇd, dramatizations of romantic obsession, marital discord, and family unhappiness. In “Close,” for example, a disoriented father-to-be wrestles—fairly predictably—with the temptation to cheat on his pregnant wife. “Home” depicts the confused reminiscences of marriage and motherhood of an Alzheimer’s patient being herded into a nursing home. And “The Jungle Lodge” portrays two sisters matured in different ways by a vacation in Peru with their doting stepfather. The more ambitious tales are generally better. “Dreadful Language” encapsulates the whole lifetime of a “judgmental” girl who coolly distances herself from loved ones, marries for comfort, and finds she has condemned herself to a life of unfulfillment. In “The Tower,” an amusing parody of Henry James’s tales of renunciation, a fortyish bachelor encounters at home and abroad an enticing young woman with whom he finds he must settle for a platonic friendship. The story even apes James’s penchant for injecting workaday metaphors (“Clara, . . . had depleted her tanks”) into otherwise ultra-genteel periodic sentences. And “Watch the Animals” deftly chronicles an unconventional heiress’s effect on her social set, in a story narrated in an eloquent first-person plural voice. Interesting forays into Cheever and Alice Adams territory, with a trace of Deborah Eisenberg’s range of subject matter. A generally worthy successor to Dark’s well-received debut volume. (First serial to Harper’s)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86521-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
A debut collection from rising star Moody (The Ice Storm, 1994; Garden State, 1992), who, here, throws together a wild, perverse, and ultimately flat mosaic of contemporary life. The diverse characters who inhabit Moody's landscape seem to have little in common apart from remarkably similar delusions of grandeur. We're shown, in the first of ten stories (``The Preliminary Notes''), the unhappy marriage of a shyster lawyer who spies obsessively on his wife as part of some unexplained scheme to ``fix her ass in court.'' A long and rambling fantasy about James Dean's association with an early '60s rock group serves as the unconvincing pretext behind ``The James Dean Garage Band,'' whereas ``Treatment'' is precisely thatan East Village filmmaker's overwrought cinematic treatment of his own very slack daily routines (``we have been sitting at this table seems like ten minutes but on screen much abbreviated not a word between us Dee the sex goddess awkward and bored and me mute uncertain studying the menu and its arcane Moroccan specials couscous couscous couscous to delay the moment what the fuck are we going to talk about...''). The centerpiece, however, is the title novella, 75- pager (first published in the Paris Review) that follows the fall of three junkies of the Reagan era in a perfect deadpan voice that hints at neither sympathy, judgment, nor comprehension: ``He was from Massapequa, Long Island, and rock and roll had transformed him from a guy from Massapequa into a person with charm....And the son, the son of this wealthy broker, was shooting dope and living in some rundown East Village apartment with nothing in it but a futon and a CD player. This kind of life gave the band with no name a lot of credibility.'' It's all vivid and well-drawn, but the obscurity of the narrator's own attitude toward his subjects turns the work into a prolonged immersion in squalor. Pointless, unfocused, and needlessly sordid overall.
Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-57929-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving and memorable introduction to a worthy voice.
Six interconnected tales set in post–World War II Japan focus mainly on the evolving relationship between a melancholy literature student and the sweet waitress he marries.
Smitten from the moment he sees Shino at the crowded Tokyo restaurant where she works, the unnamed narrator of this collection has to summon considerable courage to court the 20-year-old waitress, who is already engaged to someone else. That fact does not stand in the way of true love, though, and the two marry quickly, in spite of his belief that his family is somehow cursed. Four of his five older siblings are gone, with two sisters committing suicide and his brothers running off to an unknown fate, leaving him to look after his parents and remaining disabled sister. Preoccupied with death and ambivalent about starting a family, he nonetheless takes strength from his cheerful bride, who has risen above her own sad history. Choosing an austere penniless existence reminiscent of a Dostoevsky protagonist, our hero dedicates himself to his writing, as Shino helps support him financially and emotionally after his graduation. And while the reader might think his choices a bit unfair to Shino, there is never any doubt that they share a deep intimacy. Eventually, expecting their first child, the impoverished couple returns to his rural hometown, where he must content with his past if he is to have any hope of a future, starting with the loss of his father in “Face of Death.” The author switches gears for the final story, “And All Promenade!,” which concerns a young father who must renegotiate his family role after a careless moment with his young daughter. No less powerful than the others, this final piece convincingly depicts both the strength and fragility of close relationships. A sensation when first published in Miura’s native Japan, the book, his first to be translated into English, is at times repetitious, but it is blessed with a lovely timelessness.
A moving and memorable introduction to a worthy voice.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59376-171-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
