Brookhouse isn't exactly treading on Peyton Place turf, but he sticks to the idea that, no matter how quiet and laid-back a...
Stories, set in a fictional New Hampshire town, whose residents deal with universal issues of loneliness, indecision, lust and mortality–call it the "human condition"–from the author of A Selfish Woman (2001), which appeared in the September 1, 2001, issue of Kirkus Reviews.
Jeffrey, New Hampshire, is a summer getaway, pop. 1,100 during the off-season, all 1,100 of whom seem to wrestle with a host of dramas disproportionate to that of their meager number. The situations that arise therein can be as mundane as the ongoing attempt to finger the perp who keeps stealing and returning a sex manual from the bookshop ("Yes"), or as perplexing as figuring out just whose remains those are that recently turned up on somebody's property ("Bones"). The residents of Jeffrey all seem to have pasts that haunt them. Take fitness instructor Milly Ong: She yearns for a stranger she met briefly and then reunites with him under possibly criminal circumstances ("Milly"); or independently wealthy Arlene Givens, who's desperate to reveal herself to the now-grown daughter she gave up for adoption ("Car Talk"). This is not your sleepy little New England hamlet: Voyeurism, trespassing and sex abound–sex in particular, none of it especially passionate or erotic. Despite plots entailing murder, accidental death, theft and various prejudices, the author's straight-faced storytelling and thin character development offer little reason to care about any of Jeffrey's inhabitants, though some scenes have the power to catch the reader unaware, e.g., when a girl is brutally assaulted during a date she was already reluctant to go on (title story). Small-town conventions and narrative dryness recall Updike's Trust Me, sans the master's inimitable talent for blunt exposition. The narrative tone of these tales suggest a 1950s milieu, thus jarring the reader with what would be anachronistic references to the Internet and 9/11, for example.
Brookhouse isn't exactly treading on Peyton Place turf, but he sticks to the idea that, no matter how quiet and laid-back a place and its friendly folk may seem, you can be sure that melodrama and debauchery are at play behind closed doors. In the right hands, interesting film potential.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1936
ISBN: 0-9665798-6-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
