Another wonderfully adventurous and imaginative novel from the highly praised author of The Waking Spell (1992) and Body of Knowledge (1994). Based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and set initially in Dawson's native Texas, this is an extravagant—but engagingly believable—story of 22-year-old Taylor Troys (or, as he prefers, Deeds), a likable layabout who leaves his emotionally overextended family back in small-town Bernice and heads for Dallas to train himself as a cat burglar and track down the absentee father who didn't even stick around for his illegitimate son's birth. Encountering the elusive A.J. Deeds (and having survived hair-raising escapades among the ``Mexican Mafia''), Taylor is thrust into a tangled world of corporate intrigue and more-or-less entrusted with repairing his multimillionaire father's fractured relations with a rival Japanese conglomerate, the Minamoto Group, and embarks on a heroic journey to the Far East that will bring him to a tense, revealing confrontation with the notorious ``demon'' hidden away in a subterranean office. For all the narrative high jinks, Dawson's latest is a thoughtful, probing exploration of the truth that Taylor, in one of his quieter moments, admits to himself: that ``every child in the world ultimately dreams of his parents' perfect union.'' The painfully comic permutations of that truism are explored with ferocious wit in a sprawling narrative that holds in a brilliant balance its winning young hero's comic insouciance and moral backbone. Three terrific novels in five years, no less. It's time to put Dawson's name on the Contemporary Am Lit reading list.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-56512-126-0
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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