Wolff has an intriguing premise and something fresh to say with the horror genre, but ideological concerns trump the scares,...
Typhoid Mary is alive and well off the coast of New York.
Wolff presents a classic horror scenario—sybaritic youths running afoul of a murderous maniac in the woods—with a decidedly millennial twist: the true monster here is not the madwoman brandishing plague and a wickedly sharp barbecue fork but the very notion of social privilege. The madwoman in question is one “Typhoid” Mary Mallon, the infamous spreader of disease exiled to the rude shores of North Brother Island off the coast of Manhattan by the pioneering public health reformer George Soper. Strangely ageless at 113 years old and in typically robust health (the actual Mallon was only a carrier who never suffered the symptoms of her disease), Mary, alone on the island for decades, seethes with rage at her treatment by Soper and a society in which a poor Irish girl’s hopes and desires counted for exactly nothing. Of course, Mallon’s irresponsibility killed many innocents, but Wolff’s sympathies are squarely with Mallon…as are those of her protagonist, Karalee Soper, great-granddaughter of George, who, in an amazing coincidence, winds up stranded on Mary’s island with a cohort of her grad student pals, who are, in another amazing coincidence, studying public health. Wolff depicts the hapless scholars (who wash up on the island as a result of a drug-fueled boating excursion) as smug, grotesquely privileged boors deserving of Mary’s gruesome attentions; Karalee is the exception, as she finds herself empathizing with Mary’s plight (and that of the island’s other ghosts, women and children burned to death as a result of unpunished negligence) and progressively estranged from her doomed colleagues. Wolff’s way with characterization and situation recalls Stephen King’s grounded, relatable style (with Mary Mallon rendered particularly vividly), and she employs genre tropes deftly, but the narrative’s oddly imbalanced respect for the murderous Mallon and contempt for the grad students—who, for all of their inane self-involvement, are preparing for careers in public service—mute much of the horror, as the victims are irritating straw men and not missed when dispatched, and Karalee’s own issues (mainly a lousy dad), which align her with Mallon, seem underdeveloped and render her disloyal actions and sour perspective confusing and off-putting.
Wolff has an intriguing premise and something fresh to say with the horror genre, but ideological concerns trump the scares, and the author fails to craft a hero as compelling as her thwarted, vengeful villain.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-08970-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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