A complex literary drama that’s heavy on symbolism and existential angst.
A debut novel that presents several intertwined stories, set against the political tumult of the rise and fall of Communism.
Preiss sets his creative sights high in his inaugural effort, conjuring a dizzying array of characters around the globe. The story centers on Daniel, a 30-something man who practices environmental law—a specialty that obscures the fact that he actually defends corporate polluters. Like other characters in this book, his life was decisively influenced by a seminal experience in his youth; in his case, it drove him away from his Jewish faith into the austere arms of atheism. His marriage to a beautiful artist and fellow traveler in existential cynicism collapses, and he then seems to find true love with Susan, a firebrand socialist who disdains all things capitalist. Their love fizzles before it truly starts, though, and Daniel returns to his wife, Natalie, in a decision seemingly born more out of fatalism than fidelity. Susan, too, had a transformative experience as a young child, almost drowning in a pool, but unlike Daniel, her brush with danger pushed her in the direction of spiritualty. Another subplot features Irina, a young Russian woman who struggles to reconcile her Communist sympathies with the twilight of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, and who later becomes a famous actress in Moscow. She’s later discovered by Emmett, a journalist and former colleague of Daniel’s, and is thrust implausibly into Hollywood fame. What ostensibly connects these intersecting lives is not so much happenstance meetings, but rather the global unrest associated with Communism. The internal disorder of the characters’ lives gets mired, by turns, in self-pity or ennui, and effectively parallels the worldwide disorder generated by the collapse of a major political power. Likewise, the Soviet Union’s combination of political utopianism and authoritarian realpolitik is expressed by the way the main characters swing between pessimism and idealism. The plot itself meanders and even plods at times, and it also flirts with the absurd, as when a depressed Daniel seeks counsel from a psychic medium who channels the legendary comedian Jack Benny. Thankfully, its lively sense of humor, as well as a side story about Daniel’s legal fight with the Environmental Protection Agency, will sustain readers’ interest.
A complex literary drama that’s heavy on symbolism and existential angst.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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