Sharp writing and an unconventional plot make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A retired rock star finds work in a cemetery in this morosely intriguing novel by Castrodale (Marion Hatley, 2017).
Ben Dirjery is approaching his 50th birthday, the age at which both his father and grandfather dropped dead. He started jogging and is considering a green burial; after his death, mushrooms would break down his body naturally and make “some really nice compost.” Ben’s morbid nature often perplexes Cole, his daughter, yet it perhaps shouldn’t because her dad is a gravedigger at Bolster Hill Cemetery. Ben used to be a guitarist in an emerging rock band, The Vagrants, performing under what would become an appropriate pseudonym, Nick Graves. He traded the band for fatherhood and a steady job and now tends the cemetery where Vince Resklar, the lead singer of his band, is interred. Unrest comes to Bolster Hill when a court order requires the exhumation of the body of an unknown vagrant who was buried outside the cemetery’s gates long ago. Ben becomes caught between his contractual obligations and the outcry of the protesters who vehemently campaign for the grave to be left untouched. This novel plays upon the sense of unease associated with cemeteries. Much of the novel is set around the gravestones and follows Ben watering and weeding the grounds or observing cemetery mushrooms. Castrodale possesses the uncanny power of transforming this customarily uncomfortable space into somewhere oddly inviting. Her tender, detailed descriptions lend a magicality to the cemetery, like when Peg, one of the protesters, stumbles across bioluminescent fungi: “Crouching at the base of the tree, an old birch, she discovered that the light was coming from a clump of mushrooms in their umbrella-ish prime. They’d sprouted from one of the birch’s fallen branches....What a strange place this is, Peg thought. What a strange and wonderful place.” In the end, these startlingly incongruous parts—graveyards, guitars, and mushrooms—come together in satisfying and unexpected ways.
Sharp writing and an unconventional plot make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Garland Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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