A bleak vision that offers glimmers of compassion amid the unremitting despair.
A sense of duty seems to be the main thing distinguishing man from beast in these three long, thematically linked stories, the first of the Brazilian novelist’s work to be published in America.
There’s a certain nobility to the “brutes” of this collection, the ones who do the work too dirty or dangerous for others—gutting the pigs, collecting the trash, burning the corpses—but without whose efforts society could not function. Their work tends to dehumanize some of them, such as those who work the slaughterhouse in the opening “Between Dogfights and Hog Slaughter,” where man, meat, and sex converge. Deboning a pig can arouse lust, and human organs can be mistaken for food. (It’s not a story you’d want to read before dinner.) In the second, “The Dirty Work of Others,” the trash-collecting protagonist realizes that “everything transforms into trash; even he himself is trash to the many people, rats and vultures that constantly peck at him.” Again, boundaries blur, as a man senses the spirit of a pedophile who had defiled him within the body of a goat, and it’s there he finds some sort of redemption. A trash collectors strike threatens the city: “Vultures gather: the skies belong to them...rats reproduce abundantly and attack people in broad daylight.” The third story, “carbo animalis,” is the longest and most ambitious, a meditation on the essence of fire that encompasses both a particularly heroic firefighter and an overly busy crematorium. In a cold winter, the corpses provide the fuel for “the heat and energy necessary for the living to go on living.” As if humanity simply fuels the furnace that allows a mechanistic world to perpetuate itself.
A bleak vision that offers glimmers of compassion amid the unremitting despair.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62897-146-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her...
Avery Stafford, a lawyer, descendant of two prominent Southern families and daughter of a distinguished senator, discovers a family secret that alters her perspective on heritage.
Wingate (Sisters, 2016, etc.) shifts the story in her latest novel between present and past as Avery uncovers evidence that her Grandma Judy was a victim of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and is related to a woman Avery and her father meet when he visits a nursing home. Although Avery is living at home to help her parents through her father’s cancer treatment, she is also being groomed for her own political career. Readers learn that investigating her family’s past is not part of Avery's scripted existence, but Wingate's attempts to make her seem torn about this are never fully developed, and descriptions of her chemistry with a man she meets as she's searching are also unconvincing. Sections describing the real-life orphanage director Georgia Tann, who stole poor children, mistreated them, and placed them for adoption with wealthy clients—including Joan Crawford and June Allyson—are more vivid, as are passages about Grandma Judy and her siblings. Wingate’s fans and readers who enjoy family dramas will find enough to entertain them, and book clubs may enjoy dissecting the relationship and historical issues in the book.
Wingate sheds light on a shameful true story of child exploitation but is less successful in engaging readers in her fictional characters' lives.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28468-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read...
Marrs’ debut novel traces the stories of five people who find their soul mates—or do they?
Imagine if you could submit to a simple DNA test and then receive your Match in your email. Not just an online date who might be geographically compatible, but a true and unique genetically destined partner. While the potential long-term benefits may seem to outweigh the negative consequences, the system is far from infallible; as any science-fiction fan could tell you, if it sounds too good to be true, there’s usually a catastrophe lurking at the other end. Marrs’ novel traces five individuals who meet their Matches under varying circumstances and with widely conflicting outcomes. During the course of their romantic adventures (and misadventures), the entire DNA matching algorithm will prove to be susceptible to hacking, also proving that (gasp!) just because something may be driven by science doesn’t mean that it’s free from the world of human error. The philosophy posed by the novel speaks not just to the power of love and the laws of attraction, but also serves as a commentary on today’s world of genetic exploration. Do these breakthroughs simplify our lives, or do they make us lazy, replacing the idea of “destiny” or “fate” with “science” as a larger power that we don’t need to question? These ideas keep the novel moving along and create a deeper level of interest, since most of the narrative threads are fairly predictable. The two exceptions are the psychopathic serial killer who meets his Match and begins to lose interest in killing and the heterosexual man matched with another man, both of whom must then redefine sexuality and love, commitment and family.
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read all in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-00510-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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