The death of a literary giant liberates a marginalized member of his household into claiming her destiny in her own unique,...
The final days of novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, as related by his wry, perceptive housemaid.
Hardy is dying at Max Gate, his house in Dorset, and the people around him are trying to maintain his comfort while planning the curation of his public image. The goings-on are narrated by shrewd housemaid Nellie Titterington, a deliciously Hardy-esque name which author Wilkins (Somebody Loves Us All, 2010, etc.) notes in an afterword he discovered during his research. Hardy, “adored by the nation,” is less beloved than merely catered to at home, attended by his literary executor Sydney Cockerell, friend Sir James Barrie, and much younger secretary-turned–second-wife Florence. It's 1928, and it isn't only Hardy that's passing on, but also his Victorian morals, his style of novel, and his way of pigeonholing women—one of whom, his first wife, Emma, fared better as a dead muse than a living spouse. “Did he know just a single female—his mother or sisters, or some little girl from his childhood?” wonders Nellie. “We are just shapes to fill in a jigsaw.” Nellie leaps backward to relate her brief dalliance with a local reporter who romanced her only to dig for information on the great man and forward to hint at a future life of domestic contentment and even, ingeniously, into the head of the unhappy lady of the house, Florence, in tour-de-force stream-of-consciousness sections in which Nellie briefly imagines the world from her perspective. In the voices of unforgettable, feisty Nellie and forlorn, forbearing Florence, Wilkins tells more than the story at hand, raising questions as to whose voice is granted authority in a narrative and how a legend is remembered.
The death of a literary giant liberates a marginalized member of his household into claiming her destiny in her own unique, dazzling words.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-91070-913-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Gallic Books
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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 new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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