With its endless wars and broken economies, this error-prone novel assumes a bleak tone.
Debut author Hogstrom’s naturalistic novel presents a dark vision of struggling families.
The story is set in Sweden and then in New York. The main characters in this tale—part mystery, part family saga—are the Seger boys, Karl and Seth, and the Lee siblings, Paulie and Agnes, who all grew up together. Secondarily, we have their parents, Adam and Victoria Seger, and Eva Lee (who is also Adam’s mistress). Then there is the mysterious character Gustav Lee, who walked out on Eva years ago. The time shifts from 1950 to the early ’70s, to the ’90s, and back to 1950 and the late ’70s and so forth, becoming quite kaleidoscopic. Then there are “dreamscapes,” chapters in which Karl dreams over and over of the night Agnes was beaten almost to death by Seth, who then committed suicide (or did he?). Finally, there are the scattered italicized chapters from Paulie’s viewpoint; these give us the flavor of the times, which usually means real and dire headlines of the day (the 1979 plane crash at O’Hare, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, John Lennon’s assassination). Still, although the time frame frequently jumps and the viewpoints shift, the plot maintains its coherence. Karl and Seth both struggle to woo Agnes. Seth is a struggling writer, and his frustrations lead to drink and physical violence. Meanwhile, Karl has a high-profile, stressful job with a pharmaceutical company. Circumstances eventually lead Agnes to return to Sweden; at book’s end, gay Paulie is in a therapeutic standoff with the AIDS that had threatened to kill him. Paulie’s tenuous victory and Agnes’s late arriving peace are not enough to offset the pain that the characters have suffered for 300 pages. Agnes and Karl—not to mention Karl and Seth—cannot open up to one another. Characters cry bitterly and often, but the crying offers no real release. Hogstrom has some success limning his scenes, but errors and misspellings abound. “Break, for example, is consistently spelled “brake”; “literary” tries to stand in for “literally.” Spotting these, becomes almost a (very distracting) game for the reader
With its endless wars and broken economies, this error-prone novel assumes a bleak tone.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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