Though its reach may sometimes exceed its grasp, this collection is never less than daring and ambitious.
A volume of short stories explores dark spiritual territory, examining themes of destruction on both a personal and global scale.
In the poignant and heartbreaking “Dreaming of Fish,” a man trying to come to terms with a terminal brain tumor makes one last journey to the mountains where he and his wife have found so much joy. “Mirror Mirror” is a bit more abstract, about a man working in a frame shop who becomes obsessed with a woman’s painting, eventually trying to lose himself in the work’s world. A few tales in, the scope of the stories begins to expand. “In Its Luster” follows a schoolboy as he falls in love with a classmate, an experience reflected in scenes around the world, from an Iraqi astrophysicist to a musician who tunes his guitar. “Nolo Contendere” shows a young man developing into a serial killer, waiting with a small arsenal to shock his small town. “Gathering Algorithms” and “Which Was Once” take the apocalypse quite literally. The former is the most eerie, portraying an increasingly digital world that causes trees to grow out of control and uproot, resulting in massive devastation. The latter, a blow-by-blow account of an Armageddon where fascism increases in reaction to disasters and human hypocrisy accelerates the planet’s doom, is all plot and no characterization. The final three are more personal, ending with the transmigration of the soul of a female boar into a newborn child. Frode’s (One Times One, 2016, etc.) wild imagination is on full display here as he tries to connect these intriguing stories with the ideas of artists and thinkers like Ramana Maharshi, T.S. Eliot, and Russell Hoban by presenting quotes from their works by way of introduction. In this bold assemblage, the author’s prose can be thick, as in “Scree” when he describes a character’s outpouring of secret thoughts: “The extreme cognitive myopia under which he is now struggling is causing him to utter words and thoughts that have always fallen mute between the integers and symbols of his formulae.”
Though its reach may sometimes exceed its grasp, this collection is never less than daring and ambitious.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-359-22139-4
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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