An adult young-adult first novel set in a San Francisco high school. Based on an actual California murder and already optioned by the producer of As Good As It Gets, the story centers on a high school clique, The Basic Eight. Narrating is Flannery Culp (—culp” as in blameworthy, “Flannery” as in O’Connor), a gifted senior and editor of the school paper, now flunking calculus, who is transcribing her Journal of a Woman Wronged in order to explain how it is that she’s been accused of leading a Satanic cult into murdering a teacher, as well as a fellow student, during a madcap drugfest fueled by absinthe, gin, and rum. Also on hand is Dr. Eleanor Tert, a therapist putting her own obtuse interpretation on the events told by Flan, although Tert is so parodistic that she (and pop psychologist Peter Pusher) may he a figment of Flan’s imagination. Flan looks up to Natasha Hyatt as the most self-assured creature in Roewer High School, a girl who does everything with a panache worthy of Cyrano. The other clique members are female except for budding chef Gabriel, a black who falls for Flan. Flan has just returned from a trip to Italy during which she wrote mash letters to Adam State, though, on her return, it seems that Adam will have little to do with her, especially since she’s going out with Douglas, who turns out to be gay. When Adam does make a play for Flan, who sees herself as a dumpy virgin, and then drops her, her jealousy leads to Adam’s slaying during a weekend drinking party. Did Flan kill Adam? You’re not quite sure, up almost until the second murder, whether this is an exercise in schoolgirl ironies or a serious novel. Will high-schoolers love the confusion? Will their parents find themselves befogged by the parodies? Is the author serious? Discuss.
Pub Date: April 29, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-19833-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
D°az's first collection of ten stories, some having appeared in the New Yorker and Story, is certain to draw attention for its gritty view of life in the barrios of the Dominican Republic and rough neighborhoods of urban New Jersey. Most of the stories are linked by their narrator, who spent his first nine years in the D.R., until his father in the States brought the entire family to South Jersey, where he continued to display the survivalist machismo he developed during years of poverty, scamming, and struggle. In the Caribbean pieces, D°az offers a boy's-eye view of a hardscrabble life. In ``Ysrael,'' the narrator and his brother, sent to the countryside during the summer, plot to unmask a local oddity, a boy whose face was eaten off by a pig in his youth. Much later in the volume, ``No Face'' reappears, surviving the taunts of the locals as he waits for his trip to America, where surgeons will work on his face. ``Arguantando'' documents life in the barrio, where the narrator, his brother, and his mother eke out an existence while hearing nothing from the father. ``Negocios'' explains why: Robbed of his savings in the US, the father schemes to marry a citizen in order to become one himself, all the time thinking of his family back home. He is hardly a saint, and, reunited in New Jersey, the family is dominated by his violent temper. ``Fiesta, 1980'' recalls the narrator's bouts of car sickness, for which his father shows no sympathy. In the remaining tales, a teenaged Dominican drug dealer in New Jersey dreams of a normal life with his crackhead girlfriend (``Aurora''); a high-school dealer is disturbed by his best friend's homosexuality (``Drown''); and ``How to Date . . .'' is a fractured handbook on the subtleties of interracial dating. D°az's spare style and narrative poise make for some disturbing fiction, full of casual violence and indifferent morality. A debut calculated to raise some eyebrows.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1996
ISBN: 1-57322-041-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Yellow Wallpaper meets Rosemary’s Baby in a slim, wonderfully eerie novel.
In a decidedly creepy departure from her debut (Saturn’s Return to New York, 2001: a charmer about mothers and daughters in literary New York), Gran tells of a young woman possessed by a demon.
Amanda narrates as she describes her own frightening decline from a young, happily married architect to a woman she barely recognizes, possessed by the ancient demon Naamah. It begins imperceptibly at first—strange tapping sounds in her loft, increasing discord between her and husband Ed, her taking up cigarettes—but all these things are explained away by common sense: the loft is old and squeaks, she and Ed need more quality time together, stress at work has drawn her back to a bad habit. Perfectly reasonable, but in retrospect Amanda sees these inconsequential changes as signs of the demon taking hold of her. She dreams of Naamah: she and the demon wade in a sea of blood, Naamah, with beautiful black hair and pointy teeth, promises that she will always love Amanda and never leave. Early on, Amanda mail-orders a book on architecture, but instead she’s sent a volume on demon possession. As the months progress, she is able to answer yes to nearly all of the questions under the heading “Are You Possessed by a Demon?” She begins seducing rough men, stealing, lying, almost drowns a child while on holiday, and then commits murder. But instead of taking a more conventional route—like turning to the law—Gran smartly puts the focus inward. For Amanda, the loss of herself, in both body and mind, is far worse than the committing of these horrible crimes. She seeks help, but her doctor and psychiatrist seem to be demons themselves and Amanda begins to see demons everywhere. The tale, fast-paced and claustrophobic, raises a frightening question: Amanda could be going insane, but, in the final analysis, what’s the difference?
The Yellow Wallpaper meets Rosemary’s Baby in a slim, wonderfully eerie novel.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56947-328-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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