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THE STORYTELLER

Clumsy, mechanical, inane: a kind of YA for adults, sophomoric and repugnant at once.

Reid, we’re told, is actually a “longtime New York publishing executive” who “spent a career” in the business. Whatever. His story about an opportunistic writer is a mediocrity and rather repellent.

Steven King—pen name Konigsberg, his family’s original surname—is having trouble getting his books published, even though he did go to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and does have his own cousin Stuart for a shark-like agent. Making ends meet by bartending in Maine, however, 30ish Steven gets lucky when he’s befriended by the older and affable Ben Chambers, a wise and kindly gent who’s been everywhere, done everything—and written 20 novels, all unpublished (“I only wrote for myself,” says he) and all, presumably, about likable heroes (“If a reader doesn’t like the central character of a book, you got problems,” he tells eager novice Steven). As luck would have it—though of course it’s very sad, he was so kind and so nice—Ben soon dies (manfully and quietly, of course) of heart trouble and leaves everything he had to his new friend and wannabe writer Steven. How long does it take him, agented by the cartoonishly crass Stuart, to get rich and famous by publishing the first of Ben’s 20 novels—under the name Konigsberg? Well, let’s just say that Steven is rocketed right up there among the high-rolling gods of bestsellerdom, and, hey, he’s still got 19 more hits to go! Even when a few worms who knew the real Ben Chambers crawl out of the woodwork to blackmail Steven, things work out. One of the worms gets shot dead, Steven is implicated—but a cop who loves Steven’s books and knows he’s innocent buries the evidence, becoming afterward a writing student under the master. When his wife discovers what he’s been doing all along, Steven turns over a major new leaf: he doesn’t publish any more of the books, sets up a good-deeds foundation instead.

Clumsy, mechanical, inane: a kind of YA for adults, sophomoric and repugnant at once.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2003

ISBN: 0-385-50621-X

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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

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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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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

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