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THE SIN EATER

Name: THE SIN EATER
Author: Alice Thomas Ellis
ISBN: 1-55921-257-8

by Alice Thomas Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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Britisher Ellis follows Fairy Tale (1998) with another Welsh-set story, this one with less magic of the elfin variety but no diminishment of her own wondrous sort. The modern-day siblings (and their spouses) of an ancient family gather at the centuries- old family house in Llanelys, on the Welsh coast, drawn together by two events. One of these is the cricket-match, held annually on the grounds, between family and townsmen; the other is the lingering death-by-leukemia of the father of the family in an upstairs bedroom. Ellis never misses an irony, and the significances of the “Captain’s” dying (“Father had always taken good care of his blood . . . “) as the family slides into decline in the march of a hyper-egalitarian age are elevated all the more through his being largely ignored by those in the rooms downstairs as some of them lament, and others fritter away, the vestiges and traditions of the noble life. So it is that elder son and scion Henry bumbles while his beautiful (and wise) wife Rose laments the watering down of her native Irish Catholicism. Second son Michael—who will contribute indeed to the novel’s climax—quarrels with not-so-intelligent wife Angela, who flirts in turn with Edward, the alcoholic ultraconservative journalist (— —His wife tried to kill him a few months ago,— — explained Rose. —So he gets away whenever he can. Mostly here— —). There are also cook and caretaker Phyllis, her son Jack the Liar and grandson Gomer—the “downstairs” element of the house, contributors in more ways than one to the weekend’s symbolic decline. Perhaps most important of all is the adolescent Ermyn, thoughtful sister of Henry and Michael (’she knew where she was now; there was no comfort and no love, not anywhere—) who sees—well, sees everything, right to the inexorable end. Another Ellis treasure from start to end: the subtlety of James, the comedy of Spark, the penetrating—and the deep, unflinching—eye of Jane Austen.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-55921-257-8

Page Count: 192

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PILLARS OF GOLD
by Alice Thomas Ellis

- BOOK REVIEW
FAIRY TALE
by Alice Thomas Ellis

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.