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LEXUS SAM

Name: LEXUS SAM
Author: BP Gallucci
ISBN: 978-1-77180-044-0

by BP Gallucci ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2014

A visceral, ambitious debut that threatens to collapse before completion.

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An intriguing debut about a fractured life forcibly glued back together, with the edges cracked and jagged, pieces missing here and there.

Is Adam Williams really Lexus Sam? Lexus knows that he is Lexus, but everything around him says that he’s Adam—an apartment in Adam’s name; a boyfriend named Greg who hopes he will regain his memories; and a therapist helping him rebuild Adam’s life through medication and hypnotherapy. Images jump out at Lexus, then fade. Are they from his past or something else? Cutting with little transition from scene to scene,an apartment building to the exploding skull of Gov. MacTeague, the narrative is disorientating at first but gains clarity in the later pages. When Lexus meets Sarah, a lover from his visions, the story focuses and stabilizes itself. She doesn’t know him, but he knows her like only an intimate can. Or is he just so convinced that he is this person named Lexus that he is also convincing as her lover? When the two become closer, the line between realities shifts, splitting at the seams. Gallucci builds a remarkable amount of tension in seemingly banal scenes, layering images and psychological states that at times perfectly recreate Lexus’ mind. As he traces the visions of MacTeague’s murder, the novel intensifies, and it becomes a question of whether Lexus is reliving his past, hallucinating in the present or creating the future—“what we call the present is just the time it takes for [the] unknown to crystallize into the past.”Riveting and at points gorgeous, Gallucci’s work begins to crumble under the weight of its ideas and the scaffolding of its construction, particularly in the novel’s final third. Lexus’ visions get reduced to coincidence and psychological disassociation, and the plot holes get too big to work around. Nevertheless, reading around those shortcomings is worth it.

A visceral, ambitious debut that threatens to collapse before completion.

Pub Date: June 10, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-77180-044-0

Page Count: 270

Publisher: Iguana Books

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.