An amusing satire of self-discovery in the form of a madcap misadventure tale.
A college junior literally loses his life and must find a new one in this debut magical realism novel.
After a raging party in his fraternity the night before, Doug wakes up to discover that his life, which he keeps in a Tupperware container, has spoiled after being unceremoniously left out of the fridge all night. Things quickly go downhill from there when his stereotypically hot-but-dumb cheerleader girlfriend, Sarah, dumps him, and Doug knows it will only get worse for his much-prized social standing if his frat brothers discover he’s become a lifeless loser. Thus begins Doug’s quest to “get a life” in this self-aware story that takes that expression literally. But where does one get a life? Gerrard explores this question in varied forms but always with a bent toward the ludicrous that nonetheless grows from an insightful seed of truth. Can Doug revert to his pre-college life or get a new existence at Walmart? Can he somehow re-create the one he lost? And if he accomplishes any of those options, will that really be the life he wants? Guided—or perhaps goaded—along the plot by the author (much to Doug’s fourth-wall–breaking annoyance), the protagonist seeks the advice of a Roma and is both helped and hindered by a cast that includes a young girl from an insane asylum, a troll with a trowel, and an invisible being sporting a pair of green pants. Pursued by vindictive frat brothers and afraid of being spotted without a life—especially by the nerdy girl on campus that he won’t admit he has a crush on—Doug traverses a landscape littered with allusions to similarly manic tales as he eagerly tracks and then recalcitrantly confronts the dreaded life lessons. Though the book never manages to match the cleverness of the material that inspires it, readers should still chuckle at Doug’s struggles and find much to enjoy in the character’s growth as he reluctantly realizes his story is one of self-discovery. But whether or not he’ll get a life in time to save his carefully manicured social position, Doug doesn’t know. As the author interjects early on when his protagonist feels a moment of optimism: Doug clearly didn’t read ahead.
An amusing satire of self-discovery in the form of a madcap misadventure tale.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: REUTS Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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