Berry’s writing is so gorgeous—sometimes lush, but just as often painfully precise while capturing in stark detail the...
In this contemporary take on Charles Kingsley’s Victorian Christian classic The Water-Babies, British novelist Berry (The Hungry Ghosts, 2009) echoes the original’s fairytale lyricism while emphasizing psychology over morality as it follows four emotionally damaged British children whose lives intersect as adults.
After eight-year-old Owen’s little sister Sarah drowns, he and his parents never recover emotionally, and since he was supposed to be watching Sarah when she wandered into the sea, his guilt rules his life. Nine-year-old Catherine is following her beloved American cousin across a frozen pond when it cracks open; the girls are rescued, but barely in the nick of time. Afterwards, Catherine cannot shake the sense that she is doomed to make bad choices. Desperate to escape from the hard life of his family’s Irish farm, young Sean teaches himself to swim in the River Shannon, which becomes the only place where he finds solace. When his mother catches him swimming, his father beats him senseless. Also beaten is Naomi, an orphan whose vague memory of her mother includes swimming at a beach. Naomi’s vile abuse in a children’s home leaves her with immeasurable wells of need and anger. The four cross paths as adults in London. Sean, ambitious to become more middle class, marries Catherine, who doesn’t love him but is desperate to escape her harridan mother. Soon they have a joyless marriage and a colicky baby. Naomi becomes Sean’s mistress. Owen works for Sean selling tourist trinkets in a market stall and rooms in the apartment Sean keeps for Naomi. Owen’s redemptive story is the heart of the novel as his guilt propels his attempts to protect the other three from their demons. But some emotional damage is greater than others. Recovery does not turn out to be possible for everyone.
Berry’s writing is so gorgeous—sometimes lush, but just as often painfully precise while capturing in stark detail the emotions within a moment—that it is easy to forgive the hokier elements of the plot.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4218-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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