An imaginative but uneven tale about golf’s legendary roots.
A debut historical novel offers a fictionalization of the origins of golf.
An aging pirate and mandolin player named Mulligan returns to Ireland after many years at sea and adopts a boy who he suspects may be his illegitimate son. The stuttering, bullied boy, named Bogie, offers an opportunity for Mulligan to begin his life anew, away from the ocean. But how does a man make his living on land? Mulligan recalls “the idea he had heard some time ago that Scotland could give him a great opportunity to make lots of money carrying sticks for a French game called colf.” With that, Mulligan and the young Bogie set out for St. Andrews in Scotland, where the two find work as caddies for the gentlemen who play the game there—which, as they soon discover, is called “golf.” Bogie’s talent for the game creates tension between the traditional players of the sport—who see it as an activity unworthy of the lower classes—and the caddies who wish to be given a shot at conquering the links. As Mulligan and Bogie go up against the status quo, they have the opportunity to leave their marks—as well as their names—on the game for centuries to come. The novel serves as an origin myth, and Hellman treats his subject as a tall tale, teasing his events to farcical heights in the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels or Tristram Shandy. The lighthearted plot is entertaining enough if one can get through it: the novel is long, digressive, and rather monotonous in terms of tension and pacing. The characters are colorful and compelling, but the dialogue is an inconsistent blend of phonetic renderings of Scottish dialect and standard English that is both ridiculous and difficult to read. Numerous anachronisms (including slang such as “guy,” first names like Kelly and Shannon, and the presence of Earl Grey tea) further distract readers, keeping them from ever becoming completely immersed in Hellman’s story.
An imaginative but uneven tale about golf’s legendary roots.Pub Date: June 8, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 293
Publisher: LuckySports
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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