Part character study, part drug-induced nightmare—take a hit.
Set in the American Southwest, Stackhouse’snovel follows a recovering addict escaping the grasp of her vicious ex-lover, but once she begins settling into a new, comfortable life, she discovers her ugly past has been on her tail since the moment she left.
Tiny, now an aging desert punker nearing her 30s, went in and out of broken homes and foster care as a child, making her vulnerable with a tough-as-nails exterior—a recipe, in this case, for drawing in the wrong kind of people. She spends years going on tour as a drummer in the band Nowhoresville and, after a show, meets Kyle, a good-looking hospital attendant capable of turning her on in ways she could never imagine. Kyle and Tiny begin an odd, secluded relationship, moving in together, taking drugs, roping a handful of naïve and horny men into twisted threesomes, and generally living a pitiful, gluttonous lifestyle. Shaded by the walls of their apartment, their perverse life together doesn’t exist on the outside. There comes a point, though, when Tiny can’t bear it any longer; she slips through Kyle’s manipulative clutches and runs—fast. In her absence, Kyle is consumed with his desire for revenge, and he gets creative in his madness and sadism, plucking away, seemingly at random, at anyone who has entered or exited Tiny’s life as a means to get to her and make her pay. Some of his most favored captives are the bandmates of Second Gunner,who are held for the entirety of his tumultuous rampage. They fight tooth-and-nail during their imprisonment, buying some time for the final showdown between Kyle and his beloved. The interwoven storylines skip around, reveal and omit in a skillfully crafted narrative that builds on its suspense. Rough and crude to varying degrees, the characters are mostly from the underbelly of the modern Southwest, and Stackhouse marvelously sets up their interactions, giving a taste of the redneck, hard-rock lifestyle. Tiny’s character, in particular, is notably complex and unknowingly manipulative in her passivity. Throughout the novel, her drug-addled memory loss syncs with the bizarre way her story unfolds as if in a clouded dream.
Part character study, part drug-induced nightmare—take a hit.Pub Date: June 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990422303
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Courtney Stackhouse
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2014
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
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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