Another beautifully original, striking, and poetic novel.
Porter’s prequel to Shallcross(2015) explores the first 42 years of a South Florida man living with hallucinations.
Although the author says in a foreword that his two books may be read in any order, readers of the first might have been glad to have this one to guide them through protagonist Aubrey Shallcross’ allusive, surreal, and word-drunk world. In first- and third-person narration, Porter tells the story of Aubrey’s early years, beginning with his upbringing in Stuart, Florida. After he’s born in 1944, he seems to live a comfortable life. He goes to school and graduates from college, marries, works in and later takes over his father’s Chrysler dealership, rides in rodeos, goes surfing, takes drugs, plays in a rock band, builds a house, and develops a circle of close friends called the Blue Goose bunch after their favorite bar. Everyone knows that Aubrey talks to himself, but few know about his “drifties” (extended fantasies) or his “slippers,” hallucinatory figures whom he can speak with and sometimes see. One of the latter is Triple Suiter, nicknamed “Trip,” who’s three inches tall and originates in a mole on Aubrey’s skin. The book shows how Aubrey’s relationship with his “slippers” develops; he’s shaken at first, but then Trip becomes a kind of guardian angel, helping him through crises of loneliness, guilt, and fear. Porter also devotes several chapters to Aubrey’s friends, giving them back stories and showing how they develop the tight bonds and rich patois seen in Shallcross; they also effectively display the author’s gifts for characterization and dialogue. Porter has a fine sense of the sublime, and even when he describes horrors, such as the Vietnam War or the actions of a serial murderer, he always offers readers something more complicated than mere repulsion. As with the previous book, the most impressive thing about Aubrey’s hallucinatory world isn’t its strangeness but how it all fits together, poetically, as a creative response to suffering. For example, Triple Suiter gets his name because Aubrey’s much-loved father always wore a three-piece suit to Mass; the suit is an image of love, protection, and certainty.
Another beautifully original, striking, and poetic novel.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 9780989425629
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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