A flashy but jumbled tale about a man and his novel.
A hubristic writer sets off on a dangerous course with forces much greater than himself in this metafictional thriller.
Denver, 2021. Sean McNabb firmly believes this is the greatest day of his life. Chicago publisher Octagon sends the marketing consultant and aspiring author a plane ticket. Sean is certain that this is a sign that Octagon has accepted his book, The Cursed Man. The novel follows the life and times of Darrington Circe, a hyperdisciplined yet anonymous man who begins to see phantom crosshairs appear on the bodies of people who are about to die in various accidental ways. Sean travels to Chicago with a confidence that borders on egotism: “My novel will sell well in the heartland. I know the Midwest, and I know my novel. The big advance is understandable, as are the royalties that will come cascading in, sweetening my world with caviar…and young women with supple breasts to die for.” But when he arrives, he realizes he has been summoned for a different reason. He is one of 16 novelists who submitted manuscripts to Octagon that contained the same passage word for word: a paragraphlong description of an apocalyptic landscape. All 16 have been summoned to Chicago to get to the bottom of the common paragraph, and though they are not able to, Sean leaves more than a little intrigued. He takes with him the manuscript of one of his fellow rejected novelists, a dying woman who assures him her SF tale is a true vision of the future. She instructs him to “read it and tell the truth contained in here.” In alternating chapters, Sean and his fictional alter ego investigate their respective mysteries that nevertheless seem to lead to the same place: an endgame scenario that has been a lifetime in the making. Metteer’s (One Summer Season, 2016) prose deftly replicates the methodical, if slightly unreliable, voice of his protagonist, a man who is dependably precise and dramatic: “I make the shower as hot as I can stand it. I let the warmth melt away whatever possessed me. It’s my slow resurrection. The shower is followed by a shave, a 10-minute ordeal as the razor rakes away the last sign of my descent into mental hell.” But Sean is a patently off-putting narrator: a racist, misogynist, and narcissist consumed with getting even with those who have doubted him—his father, Big Mike, most of all—and who keeps a detailed diary of his sexual conquests. While the author attempts to redeem Sean as time goes on, it proves to be an impossible task. Metteer sets up a number of intriguing mysteries, particularly in the first 50 pages. Unfortunately, the toggling between Sean’s adventures and those of his fictional creation becomes more tedious than elucidating. One can imagine the Chuck Palahniuk–style mind-bender that the author was envisioning, but the pieces here just don’t quite come together, and the intended message becomes increasingly muddled.
A flashy but jumbled tale about a man and his novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2019
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
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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