Not worth replacing your old paperback, but a nice collector’s item for Palahniuk’s cult.
Palahniuk (Damned, 2011, etc.) plays literary DJ, revisiting and updating his 1999 novel Invisible Monsters.
In a new "Reintroduction," Palahniuk explains that Invisible Monsters was never meant to be a conventional narrative, resembling in its original incarnation the Sears catalogue or an old copy of Vogue magazine, jumping forward and backward in time with the quick-cut style changes of a classic MTV playlist. The elder statesman of transgressive fiction even sounds a bit cynical—“You young people, you who think you invented fun and drugs and good times, fuck you.”—though with his skewed sense of humor, it’s generally hard to be sure. In matter of substance, there’s not much of a “remix” to be had here, just a, “Now, please jump to Chapter Forty,” Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style that doesn’t so much reorder the book as augment the disjointed, whiplash atmosphere its author intended. The book that Kirkus drubbed “Too clever by half” in 1999 is still here in its ghoulish entirety. The narrator is Shannon McFarland, a fashion model whose beauty has been obliterated in an enigmatic accident. While recovering in the hospital, Shannon meets Brandy Alexander, a voluptuous pre-surgical transsexual who adopts Shannon and takes her on the road, granting them new monikers, identities and trades in the process. Throw in some more drag queens, a knife-wielding ex-cop, plenty of drugs, sexual abuse and even a wedding, not to mention some eerie family values. The book is really a superfluous artifact, but that doesn’t change the fact that Palahniuk remains one of the most gifted writers in American fiction.
Not worth replacing your old paperback, but a nice collector’s item for Palahniuk’s cult.Pub Date: June 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-08352-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Like the many-windowed mansion at its center, this richly furnished novel gives brilliantly clear views into the lives it...
Their mother's disappearance cements an unbreakable connection between a pair of poor-little-rich-kid siblings.
Like The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer or Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach, this is a deeply pleasurable book about a big house and the family that lives in it. Toward the end of World War II, real estate developer and landlord Cyril Conroy surprises his wife, Elna, with the keys to a mansion in the Elkins Park neighborhood of Philadelphia. Elna, who had no idea how much money her husband had amassed and still thought they were poor, is appalled by the luxurious property, which comes fully furnished and complete with imposing portraits of its former owners (Dutch people named VanHoebeek) as well as a servant girl named Fluffy. When her son, Danny, is 3 and daughter, Maeve, is 10, Elna's antipathy for the place sends her on the lam—first occasionally, then permanently. This leaves the children with the household help and their rigid, chilly father, but the difficulties of the first year pale when a stepmother and stepsisters appear on the scene. Then those problems are completely dwarfed by further misfortune. It's Danny who tells the story, and he's a wonderful narrator, stubborn in his positions, devoted to his sister, and quite clear about various errors—like going to medical school when he has no intention of becoming a doctor—while utterly committed to them. "We had made a fetish out of our disappointment," he says at one point, "fallen in love with it." Casually stated but astute observations about human nature are Patchett's (Commonwealth, 2016, etc.) stock in trade, and she again proves herself a master of aging an ensemble cast of characters over many decades. In this story, only the house doesn't change. You will close the book half believing you could drive to Elkins Park and see it.
Like the many-windowed mansion at its center, this richly furnished novel gives brilliantly clear views into the lives it contains.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-296367-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
A strong, absorbing Chilean family chronicle, plushly upholstered—with mystical undercurrents (psychic phenomena) and a measure of leftward political commitment. (The author is a cousin of ex-Pres. Salvador Allende, an ill-fated socialist.) The Truebas are estate-owners of independent wealth, of whom only one—the eventual patriarch, Esteban—fully plays his class role. Headstrong and conservative, Esteban is a piggish youth, mistreating his peons and casually raping his girl servants . . . until he falls under the spell of young Clara DelValle: mute for nine years after witnessing the gruesome autopsy of her equally delicate sister, Clara is capable of telekinesis and soothsaying; she's a pure creature of the upper realms who has somehow dropped into crude daily life. So, with opposites attracting, the marriage of Esteban and Clara is inevitable—as is the succession of Clara-influenced children and grandchildren. Daughter Blanca ignores Class barriers to fall in love with—and bear a child by—the foreman's son, who will later become a famous leftwing troubadour (on the model of Victor Jara). Twin boys Jaime and Nicholas head off in different directions—one growing up to become a committed physician, the other a mystic/entrepreneur. And Alba, the last clairvoyant female of the lineage, will end the novel in a concentration camp of the Pinochet regime. Allende handles the theosophical elements here matter-of-factly: the paranormal powers of the Trueba women have to be taken more or less on faith. (Veteran readers of Latin American fiction have come to expect mysticism as part of the territory.) And the political sweep sometimes seems excessively insistent or obtrusive: even old Esteban recants from his reactionary ways at the end, when they seem to destroy his family. ("Thus the months went by, and it became clear to everyone, even Senator Trueba, that the military had seized power to keep it for themselves and not hand the country over to the politicians of the right who made the coup possible.") But there's a comfortable, appealing professionalism to Allende's narration, slowly turning the years through the Truebas' passions and secrets and fidelities. She doesn't rush; the characters are clear and sharp; there's style here but nothing self-conscious or pretentious. So, even if this saga isn't really much deeper than the Belva Plain variety, it's uncommonly satisfying—with sturdy, old-fashioned storytelling and a fine array of exotic, historical shadings.
Pub Date: May 23, 1985
ISBN: 0553383809
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1985
BOOK TO SCREEN
APPRECIATIONS
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