by Andrew Valencia ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 2018
Vaguely dystopian though ultimately life-affirming, Valencia’s novel is an engaging examination of family dynamics and the...
A novel of intricate family relationships and inheritances set in a future in which California is an independent republic following the “disbandment” of the United States.
When Elliot Temple dies at the beginning of this novel, he leaves a legacy in shambles, for it turns out he’s had five wives and 12 children, each family unit unknown to the others. When the families find out about each other, they get together to try to make sense of the situation and to protect the fragile hold they have on their individual farms. In the Republic of California, land is carefully parceled out, and control of acreage is capped. Elliot’s marital manipulations have created a valuable legacy of 100 acres and more. The story is narrated through three points of view, and while all of the narrators are Elliot’s children, each conveys a vastly different perspective. Thirteen-year-old Ellie, the first narrator, is wise beyond her years: she actively wonders how they can “begin to build a home out of so many broken pieces.” The second narrator is Elliot Jr., a nasty piece of work who tries to manipulate the land situation in his favor. Much of his section is told in flashback, and we get enough glimpses of his father to learn that dad was just as cunning, devious, and vicious as junior. Anthony, the “Mexican” son, narrates the final section. Elliot had wanted Anthony to take a DNA test to prove his paternity and earlier had threatened to kill any child that wasn’t his. The narrative becomes unbearably tense as Elliot Jr. tries to blackmail the extended families into forking over the land and thus disrupts their tenuous stability.
Vaguely dystopian though ultimately life-affirming, Valencia’s novel is an engaging examination of family dynamics and the importance of the legacy of land.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63246-059-2
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
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by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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