A glittering, accomplished, but rather callow tale of a latter-day Lost Generation.
How empty can the lives of young, rich, beautiful people be? Find out in this jaundiced novel of contemporary mores.
Hollow dissolution comes in East and West Coast flavors in these interleaved narratives of college-aged singletons with wealthy, indulgent parents. Part I takes place at a liberal arts college in New England where an incestuous tangle of undergrads–sarcastic would-be novelist Nicole, Byronic musician Dexter, upper-crust bastard Wes, little-girl-lost Lanie–pause occasionally in their random hookups and drug-fueled partying to mope, with sly literary allusions, about the meaninglessness of their random hookups and drug-fueled partying. Part II shifts the scene to Los Angeles, where a different but intersecting group of kids enjoy a long summer vacation. The lives of these well-heeled Californians are even shallower–the cocaine more copious, the couplings more transient, the life goals restricted to cosmetic surgery and a berth in the entertainment industry. As the title hints, the authors walk in the footsteps of the master of Consumer Realist sagas of post-Reagan gilded youth. Their characters inhabit a social universe defined by musical tastes and designer-brand accoutrements. The men are preening narcissists obsessed with their abs, the women desperate waifs who wispily remember an age of innocence before the sexual debaucheries of middle school, and everyone expresses an inarticulable unhappiness by quoting muzzy rock lyrics. Weiss and Wallace sketch this world with a polished prose style, a fine ear for dialogue and pop culture and a wicked satirical edge. Unfortunately, the story comes to seem as dazed, monotonous and lightweight as its interchangeable characters. The straight-A Cal-Tech physics major is as vapid as the aspiring Playboy bunny, and their Lohan-esque excesses seem correspondingly unserious. As the Sadies and Sarahs and Samanthas trudge blearily from one party and bed to the next, even their parents have trouble telling them apart. In the end it’s almost impossible to keep track of who’s snorting what and screwing whom or why–and harder still to care.
A glittering, accomplished, but rather callow tale of a latter-day Lost Generation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4401-2073-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his...
A quick, readable, highly engaging—and bluntly pessimistic—debut tale of an Arab-Israeli whose life is one of anger, fear, and broken spirit.
“I was the best student in the class,” announces Kashua’s narrator, “the best in the whole fourth grade.” So it’s possible—isn’t it?—that he’ll go far, escape his family’s drab, broken village, be a great success? He does take the very tough exam for admission to a competitive Israeli school, does pass, does get admitted, and does attend—but not successfully. There’s too much shame for him in a boarding school full of Israeli Jews, shame at simple things like not knowing how to use silverware, what music to listen to, not having the right kind of pants, not pronouncing Hebrew correctly, and shame at bigger things, like the scorn, derision, and threat both in school and on the busses that take back home at the end of the week. Kashua offers nothing new so far—mightn’t this be another tale of schoolboy alienation overcome, true merit being demonstrated, acceptance, comradeship, and success following thereby? No, the conflicts, wounds, and humiliations are too many and too deep. The boy’s grandfather died in the war against Zionism, and even his father was a hero in his own college days, imprisoned on suspicion of complicity in blowing up a school cafeteria. And so, for all his brains, the boy, torn between cultures and histories, begins to fail in school, suffer health problems, lose morale. He never does finish college, but ends up as bartender in a seedy club, despising the Arabs who come in to dance, despising even his own wife, the birth of a baby daughter notwithstanding. Life, at novel’s end, remains seedy, undirected, filled with sorrow, failure, and regret.
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his story rings out on every page with a compelling sense of human truth.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-4126-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.
A young gay man reckons with love, tribal lore, and a decades-old murder in this rangy debut novel.
Marion, the main narrator of Staples’ first book, isn’t where he wants to be, and that’s back in his hometown on Minnesota’s Ojibwe reservation. A brief stint in the Twin Cities ended with busted relationships, but his best romantic prospect in the area is deeply closeted former high school classmate Shannon, who has the unglorious job of attending to animal carcasses on a resort island. Still, Staples, an Ojibwe writer, wants to suggest that the best way to move forward is by facing one's past head-on. The notion arrives first via symbolism: As children, Marion and his friends spooked each other by saying a dog died under the merry-go-round at the playground, and now that dog reappears (or seems to) in Marion’s presence. That incident sparks Marion’s investigation into his high school days, in particular the murder of Kayden, a basketball star who became a father shortly before he was killed. Plotwise, the story is a stock hero’s-journey tale, as Marion lets go of his skepticism of Ojibwe spiritualism, discovers the truth about Kayden’s death, and finds a community along with a degree of emotional fulfillment. But credit Staples for complicating the story in some interesting ways, from shifting perspectives from Marion to other townspeople (with a particular emphasis on Native women), a smirking humor that cuts the mordant atmosphere (“What do Indians call a lack of faith?” “Being white”), and a graceful handling of Ojibwe culture. In its later stages, the story seems to keep sprouting tentacles as new characters and revelations emerge, which saps some of its narrative drive, but it returns affectingly to the messy fates of Marion and Shannon.
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64009-284-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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