Caustic, gripping and distinctive—intelligent entertainment.
Another bitterly amusing mystery from the author of A Field of Darkness (2006).
The Santangelo Academy is a school of last resort, an expensive dumping ground for addicted, addled and dangerous teenagers. Madeline Dare is almost as desperate as her students when she starts teaching there: The job that lured her husband from Syracuse to the Berkshires disappears before he even begins work, and a position teaching history is the only employment Madeline can find. She’s got other, more existential issues, too—ones that some readers will recall from Madeline’s first appearance in Read’s debut—and the draconian therapeutic regimen at Santangelo is only exacerbating her emotional unease. Having been raised amidst the baroque self-help culture of California in the ’70s, Madeline is both familiar with and deeply skeptical of the school founder’s unorthodox methods. Her cynicism turns to something deeper and more terrible, though, when she suspects that the supposed suicide of two students was actually murder. Her fear and outrage intensify when she becomes a suspect. Like the many caterers, quilters and cat-lovers who inhabit mystery fiction, Madeline has a knack for amateur sleuthing, but there’s nothing cozy about this novel (the violence is occasionally spectacular, and there is liberal use of the F-word). And, like the oft-imperiled heroines of romantic suspense, Madeline has a gift for getting into trouble, but Read does not use danger as an impetus for crazy sex (Madeline is securely, sedately married, and when she and her husband go to bed together, it’s for sleeping). Rather, Read borrows elements from different genres to craft a strange, compelling narrative, one that frequently approaches—but never quite descends to—the excesses of melodrama. Madeline’s deadpan voice, acid wit and psychological depth are the perfect counterpoint to the novel’s positively Gothic plot. In her shadowed complexity and stubborn—but fragile—integrity, Madeline resembles many of the genre’s most enduring protagonists. She’s a great character, and her creator is a great storyteller.
Caustic, gripping and distinctive—intelligent entertainment.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-58259-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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