Morose but effective character study by esteemed Norwegian novelist Solstad (Professor Anderson’s Night, 2011, etc.).
Singer isn’t much to behold. He can’t dance, can’t sing, hasn’t gotten very far along in his aspirations to be a writer. What’s a bookish failure to do, having exhausted the possibilities of his job as a “punctual and conscientious sales clerk in the state liquor store”? Go to library school, from which Singer emerges at the age of 34 with a job in a small city in the mountainous Telemark district. He settles into a “simple, well-ordered life” that is soon disrupted by the attentions of ceramicist Merete Sæthre, who presumably settles for him in turn because there’s not a huge smorgasbord of romantic possibilities for a single mother with a 2-year-old child. Solstad breaks the fourth wall to tell us that he’s not going to tell us much more about Merete: “She is not the main character in this novel; it’s doubtful that she could have been the main character in any novel of a certain quality.” Thus, when her discontent with Singer mounts to the point of fracture, it’s easy enough, one supposes, to dispose of her, leaving Singer to tend to the young daughter who’s his in the eyes of the law only. Singer is, let us say, not adept at coping; as Solstad writes, it’s hard to imagine that he, too, “can be the main character in any novel at all, regardless of quality.” Still, after he summons up an imaginary friend upon whom to spill his grief, he manages to rise to the occasion, sort of. Suffice it to say that, as the years pass, single fatherhood doesn’t do much to improve his mood.
Knut Hamsun remains the king of Nordic gloom, but Solstad gives him a run for the money in a story at once traditional and postmodern.Pub Date: May 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2596-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable...
13
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Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover (Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson.
Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie—and that he's deaf. Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. In fact, it creates opportunities for sexy nonverbal communication and witty text messages: Ridge tenderly washes off a message he wrote on Sydney’s hand in ink, and when Sydney adds a few too many e’s to the word “squee” in her text, Ridge replies, “If those letters really make up a sound, I am so, so glad I can’t hear it.” While they fight their mutual attraction, their hope that “maybe someday” they can be together playfully comes out in their music. Peterson’s eight original songs flesh out Sydney’s lyrics with a good mix of moody musical styles: “Living a Lie” has the drama of a Coldplay piano ballad, while the chorus of “Maybe Someday” marches to the rhythm of the Lumineers. But Ridge’s lingering feelings for Maggie cause heartache for all three of them. Independent Maggie never complains about Ridge’s friendship with Sydney, and it's hard to even want Ridge to leave Maggie when she reveals her devastating secret. But Ridge can’t hide his feelings for Sydney long—and they face their dilemma with refreshing emotional honesty.
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable characters and just the right amount of sexual tension.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5316-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2014
Categories: ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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