Way funnier than most mysteries, and more thrilling than most comic novels.
This audacious, genre-bending debut novel fuses an academic comedy of manners with an existential murder mystery.
Translated from the French, the novel by former schoolteacher Dufossé suggests that the terrors and traumas of the early teen years transcend national boundaries. The plot begins with the apparent suicide of Eric Capadis, who apparently couldn’t resist the impulse to jump from the window of his middle-school classroom. His replacement is Pierre Hoffman, who also serves as the novel’s narrator, and who was the closest thing that Capadis had on the faculty to a friend. The parallels between the 25-year-old Pierre and his unfortunate predecessor are striking and unnerving: Both are lonely and seemingly sexless bachelors (though Pierre has an incestuous infatuation with his sister) and both do their best to resist the dysfunctional dynamics of the faculty, which can be as threatening as any of the challenges presented by a classroom full of 13-year-old students. Early on, Pierre is warned by one of those students that he should get out while he can, a suggestion that something more than suicide led to the death of Capadis. As other misfortunes bedevil these students, it appears that this particular group might be the classroom of the damned. Though the mystery sustains the narrative momentum, a deliciously black humor laced with philosophical speculation (and occasional punk-rock references) spices the prose. Pierre proves to be the most cluelessly untrustworthy of narrators, leading readers to wonder whether the students are as much of a threat to Pierre as Pierre might be to the students (or to himself). And whatever the craziness, hormonal and otherwise, inherent within the early teens, the students could hardly be more collectively maladjusted than the faculty entrusted with teaching them. The result is a tightrope performance between tragedy and farce.
Way funnier than most mysteries, and more thrilling than most comic novels.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-14-303811-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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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