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GIRL IN THE MOONLIGHT

Name: GIRL IN THE MOONLIGHT
Author: Charles Dubow
ISBN: 978-0-06-235832-5

by Charles Dubow ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2015

A story of the most interesting people you will ever know, told with style and verve.

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In Dubow's second novel (Indiscretion, 2013)—pleasingly reminiscent of Maugham and Fitzgerald—our hero narrates a lifetime spent adoring one impossibly beautiful, out-of-reach woman.

Wylie Rose's obsession with Cesca Bonet begins at 9, the day he breaks his arm trying to impress her on her family's East Hampton estate. The novel, set in the last half of the 20th century, spans decades of their lives as they pursue their dreams (in the glamorous way only the very rich can) and slip in and out of love affairs, always returning to each other. Cesca is one of four children born to a New York heiress and a Spanish artist; Wylie's father warns him of the family: "They're beautiful, talented, rich. It's all very seductive. But they're like spoiled children. They'll take everything and give nothing in return." But it's too late—young Wylie is in their thrall. He befriends Cesca's brother Aurelio, who even as a teenager is a talented painter and who nurtures Wylie's dreams of painting and introduces him to the last of the area's fabled abstract expressionists. Out of boredom, Cesca takes Wylie as a lover and casts a spell over him; no other woman can ever compare to her wild, slightly tragic allure. She moves to London, has affairs with rich young men who want to marry her, leaves them, has brief trysts with Wylie, and then moves on, breaking his heart, over and over again. Meanwhile, Wylie becomes an architect, moves to Paris, dates the daughter of a count (weekends at the chateau are lovely) until Cesca calls for him. The novel is a whirlwhind of impossibly chic settings and experiences; the characters know all the right people and do all the right things—Cesca is at Max's Kansas City with Iggy Pop, Aurelio's mentor was friends with Pollock—though to some extent the novel's heavy reliance on character development through association is a weakness. Nevertheless, Dubow offers a heady, intoxicating tale, and young Wylie's journey to manhood is a memorable one.

A story of the most interesting people you will ever know, told with style and verve.

Pub Date: May 12, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-235832-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 4, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.