Piatt’s (Banned Questions About Christians, 2013, etc.) first foray into fiction is a religious thriller about a secret group aiming to incite the second coming.
Jacob is a relatively typical 19-year-old who works at a record store in Denver, plays sax and rides a skateboard. But he also has strange dreams of Jesus, set around the time that he was crucified, and wakes up with his own wrists seeping blood. He finds out about a strange man in black who’s been asking others about him and who later breaks into his co-op room. The man works for a group called The Project. New York journalist Nica has previously investigated the group, which crops up again when she’s writing an article about the Titulus Crucis, a piece of wood that’s reputedly a relic of Jesus’ crucifixion. The Project, it seems, is using science to engineer the second coming of Christ, a fact which eventually leads Nica to Jacob. This short novel is rich with detail, and many of Nica’s interviews feel like history lessons; at one point, for example, she and Dr. Pavel, who analyzed a sample of the Titulus Crucis, discuss the mutual appreciation between science and religion. But no part of Nica’s investigation feels tedious, and most of what she learns becomes important as she closes in on The Project’s ultimate goal. The more exciting, modern scenes are offset by the slower scenes of Jesus at the cross and during the days that followed. The two time periods alternate throughout the novel; the placid, engaging tale of the persecution of Jesus’ followers nicely counterbalances the tense, contemporary thriller, which later features a kidnapping. The novel also boasts an understated love story between Jacob and Elena and expanding intrigue as Jacob realizes that there’s much more to his life than vivid dreams. Readers will likely see where the story’s headed, as Piatt does drop quite a few hints as it goes along. He also smoothly sets up a potential sequel.
An inspired, stimulating religious thriller.
Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1938633553
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Samizdat Creative
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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