A quietly piercing cultural and philosophical think-piece, comparable in its low-key, allusive moodiness to a European...
Suspicions regarding her absent husband lead a news photographer into meditation on self-knowledge and conflict in Menéndez’s latest (Loving Che, 2004, etc.).
Short, poetic, atmospheric and introspective, the narrative follows a Dominican-American nicknamed Flash as she descends into isolation and uncertainty after receiving a letter signed “Mira” (she doesn’t know any one named Mira) that casually assumes she knows all about her husband Brando’s current affair and previous adulteries. Flash and Brando—aka Wonderboy for his blond good looks and preppy aura—have spent a decade following wars around the world as a journalist/photographer team. “The papers he worked for then acted as if they were doing us a favor, allowing their boy wonder to travel with the wife,” she notes sardonically. Currently he is in Baghdad, and Flash is waiting for accreditation in Istanbul. Even before the poisonous letter arrives she senses her reluctance to join him and also detects signs that the marriage may be fragile. A woman in a black abaya who seems to be following Flash turns out to be Alexandra, an old colleague from other chapters in her nomadic married life. Alexandra offers double-edged friendship while Flash wanders the city, drinks, decides to leave, changes her mind and is then overtaken by events. Brando remains an offstage presence, his phone calls variously practical, needy and ultimately angry in response to Flash’s cool tone. Only years later does she come fully to accept that the layers of betrayal, delusion and loss in her marriage correspond to a larger world of eternal turmoil.
A quietly piercing cultural and philosophical think-piece, comparable in its low-key, allusive moodiness to a European art-house movie.Pub Date: May 26, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-172476-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop...
A convicted murderer who may be a latter-day Messiah wants to donate his heart to the sister of one of his victims, in Picoult’s frantic 15th (Nineteen Minutes, 2007, etc.).
Picoult specializes in hot-button issues. This latest blockbuster-to-be stars New Hampshire’s first death-row inmate in decades, Shay Bourne, a 33-year-old carpenter and drifter convicted of murdering the police officer husband of his employer, June, and her seven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Eleven years later Shay is still awaiting execution by lethal injection. Suddenly, miracles start to happen around Shay—cell-block tap water turns to wine, an AIDS-stricken fellow inmate is cured, a pet bird and then a guard are resurrected from the dead. Shay’s spiritual adviser, Father Michael, is beginning to believe that Shay is a reincarnation of Christ, particularly when the uneducated man starts quoting key phrases from the Gnostic gospels. Michael hasn’t told Shay that he served on the jury that condemned him to death. June’s daughter Claire, in dire need of a heart transplant, is slowly dying. When Shay, obeying the Gnostic prescription to “bring forth what is within you,” offers, through his attorney, ACLU activist Maggie, to donate his heart, June is at first repelled. Practical obstacles also arise: A viable heart cannot be harvested from a lethally injected donor. So Maggie sues in Federal Court to require the state to hang Shay instead, on the grounds that his intended gift is integral to his religious beliefs. Shay’s execution looms, and then Father Michael learns more troubling news: Shay, who, like Jesus, didn’t defend himself at trial, may be innocent.
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop plot.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7434-9674-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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