Outrageous naming (Harry Dig, the undertaker; Miss Happ, an office worker) and absurd narrative techniques can’t rescue this...
A parrot turns into a human in this debut novel from Scotland native Deans.
Executive Bob T. Hash III, founder and CEO of the Acme Institute, which provides language courses to business folks, one day decides to travel to Acapulco in the disguise of Señor Gonzalez. At the same time his personal assistant, Miss Scarlett, also “mysteriously” disappears. And still at the same time, an African grey parrot at Hash’s home comes crashing down off his perch, emerging as a physical double of Hash himself. The parrot doesn’t know how this happened, but he quickly enters Hash’s life since the executive is conveniently away, supposedly on that business trip to Mexico. The parrot retains his consciousness even as he enters into the minutiae of Hash’s life, including bedding his wife, Matilda. Well, why not? The parrot “…is both an honorable and a monogamous coupler.” Hash/Parrot begins to feel quite comfortable in his new life, finding that “the office chores [he] was expected to perform required little more…[than] a hand shake, a wave, and a smile.” He becomes a more aggressive boss, editing the errors out of the Acme Institute’s major publication, Forward with English!, and seeing it through the eighth edition. Along the way the parrot uses the conventions and cheerleading of language publications (e.g., “Delivering a Sales Pitch,” “Idiomatic Expressions and Phrasal Verbs”) to advance his narrative. Things get a bit sticky when, toward the end of the novel, the real Bob T. Hash III shows up and bewilderingly confronts his double.
Outrageous naming (Harry Dig, the undertaker; Miss Happ, an office worker) and absurd narrative techniques can’t rescue this novel from being self-consciously cute and overly clever.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6700-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.
Wayne’s latest foray into the dark minds of lonely young men follows the rise and fall of a friendship between two aspiring fiction writers on opposite sides of a vast cultural divide.
In 1996, our unnamed protagonist is living a cushy New York City life: He's a first-year student in Columbia’s MFA program in fiction (the exorbitant bill footed by his father) who’s illegally subletting his great-aunt’s rent-controlled East Village apartment (for which his father also foots the bill). And it is in this state—acutely aware of his unearned advantages, questioning his literary potential, and deeply alone—that he meets Billy. Billy is an anomaly in the program: a community college grad from small-town Illinois, staggeringly talented, and very broke. But shared unease is as strong a foundation for friendship as any, and soon, our protagonist invites Billy to take over his spare room, a mutually beneficial if precarious arrangement. They are the very clear products of two different Americas, one the paragon of working-class hardscrabble masculinity, the other an exemplar of the emasculating properties of parental wealth—mirror images, each in possession of what the other lacks. “He would always have to struggle to stay financially afloat,” our protagonist realizes, “and I would always be fine, all because my father was a professional and his was a layabout. I had an abundance of resources; here was a concrete means for me to share it.” And he means it, when he thinks it, and for a while, the affection between them is enough to (mostly) paper over the awkward imbalance of the setup. Wayne (Loner, 2016) captures the nuances of this dynamic—a musky cocktail of intimacy and rage and unspoken mutual resentment—with draftsmanlike precision, and when the breaking point comes, as, of course, it does, it leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible.
A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-400-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
In this new novella by the Nobel Prize-winner, a Colombian-village murder 20 years in the past is raked over, brooded upon, made into a parable: how an Arab living in the town was assassinated by the loutish twin Vicario brothers when their sister, a new bride, was rejected by her bridegroom—who discovered the girl's unchastity. Cast off, beaten, grilled, the girl eventually revealed the name of her corrupter—Santiago Nassar. And, though no one really believed her (Nassar was the least likely villain), the Arab was indeed killed: the drunken brothers broadcasted their intentions casually; they went so far as to sharpen their murder weapons—old pig-sticking knives—in the town market; and the town, universal witness to the intention, reacted with epic ambivalence—sure, at first, that such an injustice couldn't occur, yet also resigned to its inevitability. As in In Evil Hour (1979) and other works, then, what Garcia Marquez offers here is an orchestration of grim social realities—an awareness that seems vague at first, then coheres into a solid, pessimistic vision. But, while In Evil Hour threaded the message with wit, fanciful imagination, and storytelling flair (the traits which have made Garcia Marquez popular as well as honored), this new book seems crammed, airless, thinly diagrammatic. The theme of historical imperative comes across in a didactic, mechanistic fashion: "He never thought it legitimate," G-M says of one character, ironically, "that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so there should be the untramelled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold." (Also, the novella's structural lines are uncomfortably close to those of Robert Pinget's Libera Me Domine.) So, while the recent Nobel publicity will no doubt generate added interest, this is minor, lesser Garcia Marquez: characteristic themes illustrated without the often-characteristic charm and dazzle.
Pub Date: April 15, 1983
ISBN: 140003471X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983
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