Not an easy read, and at times overlong, but a book with moments of brilliance.
The persecution of Majorcan Jews during the Spanish Inquisition is the rich subject of this ambitious 1994 novel, the second book in English translation from the prominent Catalan author (A Matter of Self-Esteem, 2001).
The complex, somewhat labored opening chapters offer both clever misdirection and vivid exposition—first in the romantic adventure of a corsair captain summoned to the bedroom of a mysterious beauty (later identified as a wealthy widow sympathetic to Jewish citizens), then in the emotional turmoil undergone by Jewish silversmith Rafel Cortès, Costura, who has converted to Catholicism and has all but resolved to betray his cousin and namesake (who has retained their family’s faith) to Father Ferrando, the Machiavellian priest who sees the Inquisition’s gathering momentum as his stepping-stone to higher “spiritual” achievement. Riera then introduces a fascinating gallery of variously involved characters, among them putative “rabbi” Gabriel Valls, the Majorcan Jews’ spiritual patriarch; compassionate Father Amengual (Father Ferrando’s temperamental and moral opposite); Viceroy Santomaro y Ampuero, whose official duties are compromised by insatiable sexual appetites; and merchant Pere Onofre Aguiló, who masterminds the endangered Jews’ escape aboard a ship bound for Livorno. Bad weather intervenes, informers betray their neighbors and fugitives are arrested, detained at the Zola-esque Black House deep in the recesses of the Inquisitorial Palace—and interrogation and torture ensue, climaxing with a vengeful “purificatory fire.” (In a moving final paragraph comes the explanation of Riera’s perfectly chosen title.) This is very nearly a great novel: It’s exalted by its recreation of a time (the late 17th century) and place imperiled by religious violence—surely a subject that should attract the attention of contemporary readers—but it’s flawed by the author’s tendency to provide exhaustive background information for virtually every major character, each of whose thoughts and memories are likewise lavishly detailed.
Not an easy read, and at times overlong, but a book with moments of brilliance.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2007
ISBN: 1-58567-853-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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