A brilliant conceit never finds the right seriocomic groove.
Can the secret of better living be found in the pages of ultra-niche magazines? One man spends many low-pay, high-angst years finding out in Haas’s debut.
Henry Bay’s career in the glory-free world of enthusiast rags like Crochet Life, Wakeboarding and Monster Truck Tunin’ begins in college. He’s initially interested in studying law so he can sue the aerospace company that laid off his father, but his experiences in a sport that mixes off-roading and parasailing prompts him to move from California to Illinois to work at Kite Buggy magazine. “There’s a magazine as soon as five people find a new way to hurt themselves,” Henry notes, and the author has great fun inventing both obscure publications like Cozy, the Magazine of Tea and the off-kilter people who fill their pages. (One woman crochets throws that depict violent crimes; the editor of Exotic Pets runs an office where a turtle, a kinkajou and a fennec fox mingle with the staff.) Haas has so much fun, in fact, that the thin plot feels like an afterthought. Henry’s older brother Barney is a brilliant scientist who acts out against his suffocating wife by engaging in the kind of extreme sports Henry covers, and their fate is tied to a Unabomber type who darts in and out of the narrative. The novel’s message is clear: Our lives are often lived most sincerely in the hobby-obsessed margins, and the happiest relationships are with those who indulge our quirks. Yet neither Barney nor Henry’s love interest are much more fully sketched than the staffers at the enthusiast magazines, and Henry is an ungainly mix of good intentions and absurdity; the reader loses count of just how many low-circulation magazines he works at in how many small towns. His character rarely feels like more than a repository for Haas’s riffs on subcultures, though Henry’s sincerity keeps the novel from degrading into farce.
A brilliant conceit never finds the right seriocomic groove.Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-171182-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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