Existential dread takes on new meaning in a fantastical tale of shifting realities, second-chance romance, and unwanted...
In Dodds’ (Watershed, 2017, etc.) novel, an office worker with supernatural powers begins a relationship with a telecommunications tycoon whose dark, metaphysical secret is equally startling.
Farya Navurian lived on a version of Earth in which the glorious Greater Majestic Anointed Commonwealth of Ohio spanned a continent and her famous astronaut father was a deep-space ambassador. However, it didn’t last because Farya has a mysterious, apocalyptic ability: If she lets her attention wander and daydreams, tracts of reality simply diminish and dissolve, as if they’d never happened. Formerly large cities, such as Camden, New York, are suddenly unremarkable towns, and Ohio becomes a mundane Rust Belt state. During these paradigm shifts, millions of people vanish; only a handful (notably, Farya’s surprisingly easygoing best pal, Ethan) retain memories of incredible, lost cultures and loved ones. Guilt-ridden Farya winds up a downtrodden Jersey City office worker. Meanwhile, wealthy Metacom boss Bryan Lomoigne faces a dilemma. He wittily included a fine-print clause in his company’s cellphone contracts that grants Metacom “Non-Mortal Element Rights” from anyone signing up for their cheap gadgets; in other words, his customers sell their souls to him. Some buy them back at heavy cost, but it’s basically a side hustle for Bryan, who’s the son of a deceased, dissolute rock star who fathered a large number of children. Faced with middle age and a failing marriage, Bryan wants to sell his business and devote himself to buying back his father’s song catalog. But Metacom has unusual business partners who have alarming methods of enforcing their will. When Bryan and Farya meet at a record swap—Thelonious Monk tunes help her maintain her equilibrium—they embark on a relationship despite the considerable paranormal baggage they both try to keep out of sight. Dodds offers a transfixing, fantastic narrative that first seems like two separate, weird tales. It’s a fabulist, careening plot that’s reminiscent of the late-career, anything-goes fiction of Kurt Vonnegut (such as 1997’s Timequake). The author executes the story with exacting, direct prose and characters who live and breathe in the mind even as their own realities seem built on shifting ground. He keeps the tale moving forward with sublime aplomb even though, at numerous points, the material could have easily gone off the rails. The vanished, fondly recalled Greater Majestic Anointed Commonwealth of Ohio, for example, is only sparingly hinted at; it wasn’t a paradise, but it certainly made for an interesting home address. Although that particular bit of business might serve as a nice metaphor for the mindsets of imaginative SF/fantasy readers who long to escape dreary daily reality, this is too broad and rich a work to pigeonhole as a collection of inside jokes. Instead, it shows great psychological and philosophical nuance, ruminating on relationships, family, commerce, art, sacrifice—and reading the fine print of company terms and conditions. Overall, readers will find it to be an exceptional work.
Existential dread takes on new meaning in a fantastical tale of shifting realities, second-chance romance, and unwanted business partners.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9721805-9-7
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Dodds Amalgamated
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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