Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.
A lyrical first novel from Pierce (stories: Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women, 1994) about a tragic death and a corresponding
birth. Part expos‚ of survivor’s guilt and part family chronicle, the tale opens with a dramatic crash: driving home drunk one winter night, Leonarda and her boyfriend, Danny, slide off a bridge and into the Charles River, killing Danny and transforming Leo’s life. Driven by the slow exploration of its eccentric characters, the narrative spans nine months, from the accident to the birth of the child Leo didn’t know she was carrying when they crashed. She attempts to continue life as planned, finishing her thesis and preparing her audition piece at the conservatory where she studies violin, while also grappling with the approach of single parenthood in the shadow of death. Slowly rebuilding ties with her otherworldly parents also strains the normally retiring Leo, though at the same time these struggles serve as impetus for her in finding an identity that’s separate both from the domineering Danny and from her dramatically consuming parents. Some of the more engaging episodes spring from Leo’s childhood memories of her family’s blissfully lonely old Cambridge house: sleeping on the widow’s walk, tightrope-walking the banister, creating her own, odd animal sanctuary—raising herself because her parents couldn’t. Lydia, a recluse since Leo’s birth, provided for her daughter little besides an image of sorrowful beauty, while August, when not working in the invention room, doted on his wife. When Leo returns to the family roost, life is unchanged, save that some of the heirlooms have been pawned to pay for toast and tea. Into the small chaos of Leo’s life wanders Kilroy, a chess player with his head in the air and feet on the ground, who offers Leo unconditional love and stability. As the baby’s birth approaches, small miracles start to bloom, transforming all the lives touched by Leo, and by Danny’s death.
Small in scope, but an elegant foray into beauty gleaned from tragedy.Pub Date: March 15, 2000
ISBN: 1-58465-021-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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