A depressingly beautiful portrait of the metropolitan human.
An unnamed narrator experiences the violent tides of a contemporary drug-infused life in New York City.
Living in Williamsburg with a shiba inu named Max, an unnamed and genderless narrator struggles with a series of addictions: romance, drugs, and career. “Me, immortal teenager: always awkward and anxious, forever lonely, constantly desirous of Yes’s from No’s as if I were the deserving exception.” Steeped in both the art world and the advertising industry, the narrator experiences life through a cloud of medicine (“pop two lithium, one Zoloft, and two Klonopin”) and consequently functions as would a ghost haunting his own stomping grounds. The narrator spends time with Pedro, a supremely controversial performance artist who throws themed art parties with names like “Fuck My Mother,” encouraging decadent, uninhibited sexual behavior. The narrator does whatever Pedro requests, including drug cocktails and weeklong benders. The two engage romantically only to realize that their compatibility is just as ephemeral as their high. In the second part, the narrator seems to put a damper on the party scene, this time dating Jacques, an emerging actor who has violent tantrums that only rough sex and emotional outcries can calm. As the narrator attempts to go off meds, their relationship becomes exceptionally codependent, though Jacques is much better at staying away. The comedown affects every aspect of the narrator’s life and induces a series of highly disruptive and murderous episodes. Stoddard (Limiters, 2014, etc.) has created an addictive and intoxicating environment for his readers. The lack of pronouns and overwhelming use of action verbs give the text a depersonalized effervescence that penetrates the reader’s mind with almost no difficulty. As a result, the narrator could be anyone who happens to read this story, but most importantly, the narrator embodies a version of New York that we seldom talk about.
A depressingly beautiful portrait of the metropolitan human.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9976432-1-3
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Itna Press
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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