A truly visceral read that will not let readers look away.
In his second book, Busqued unnerves and entertains readers with this forensic tale synthesized from more than 90 hours of dialogue with a serial killer.
The author’s interviews with Ricardo Melogno detail not only his crimes, which took place during one week in 1982, but also his motivations—or lack thereof—and the killer’s fascinating, disturbing psyche. When asked by the narrator, Melogno readily admitted to shooting four taxi drivers at point-blank range. However, when pressed about why he did it, he was unable to offer a satisfying answer. According to the court investigator who arrested Melogno, he waited until “something indicated ‘that one’ to him. He could sense it, but he didn’t know how or why. He couldn’t say why he killed them, or how he chose them.” From there, readers embark on a dark journey into Melogno’s childhood, when he was largely neglected but occasionally accompanied his abusive mother to spiritual and healing ceremonies. “My mother used religion as a weapon: she beat the living daylights out of me, but she’d say it wasn’t her who was beating me, it was God punishing me through her.” Due to his upbringing, Melogno developed superstitions and beliefs in certain dark arts: “In all those places my mother took me…well, everyone said that I had this strong ability for channeling that I had inherited from her.” Due to his presence and his behavior, described by some as an “evil streak,” many inmates and guards feared him, a situation Melogno describes with particular intensity. Though this book is short, it packs a hard punch, from the first page—Busqued’s first comment to Melogno: “I was told that someone saw you levitate”—through the artfully rendered interview process with criminal, arresting officers, and psychiatrist. The narrative is perfect for anyone fascinated by the criminal mind, the distinctions between mental illness and possession, or the concept of predestined evil.
A truly visceral read that will not let readers look away.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948226-68-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.
A bestselling memoirist’s account of coping with an unexpected midlife evolution in sexual identity.
When Wizenberg, who runs the popular Orangette blog, received a jury duty summons, she never thought that it would lead to divorce. In court, her eyes were immediately drawn to a female defense attorney dressed in a men’s suit. Her thoughts lingered on the attractive stranger after each day’s proceedings. But guilt at being “a woman wearing a wedding ring” made the author feel increasingly guilty for the obsession that seized her. Her husband, Brandon, a successful Seattle restaurateur, and their daughter were the “stars” that guided her path; the books she had written revolved like planets around the sun of their relationship and the restaurants they had founded together. However, in the weeks that followed, Wizenberg shocked herself by telling her husband about the attraction and suggesting that they open their marriage to polyamorous experimentation. Reading the work of writers like Adrienne Rich who had discovered their lesbianism later in life, Wizenberg engaged in deep, sometimes-painful self-interrogation. The author remembered the story of a married uncle, a man she resembled, who came out as gay and then later died of AIDS as well as a brief lesbian flirtation in late adolescence where “nothing happened.” Eventually, Wizenberg began dating the lawyer and fell in love with her. Wizenberg then began the painful process of separating herself from Brandon and, later, from their restaurant businesses that she had quietly seen as impediments to her writing. Feeling unfulfilled by Nora, a self-professed “stone top” who preferred to give pleasure rather than receive it, Wizenberg began to date a nonbinary person named Ash. Through that relationship, she came to embrace both gender and sexual fluidity. Interwoven throughout with research insights into the complexity of female sexual identity, Wizenberg’s book not only offers a glimpse into the shifting nature of selfhood; it also celebrates one woman’s hard-won acceptance of her own sexual difference.
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4299-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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