A lovingly designed metafictional sendup of genre novels.
A debut metafictional fantasy tells the story of a private investigator plucked out of his own book.
Joe Slade is the prototypical hard-boiled detective: street-smart, tough, wisecracking, and jaded. He’s attempting to solve his latest case when three strangers—emphasis on strange—step in and solve it for him. They seem to know everything about him, in fact. He agrees to go with them to their hideout to discuss a proposition they have for him. That’s when things get really weird: Time and space begin to warp, and he ends up in an impossibly large library filled with an infinite number of books. Even some volumes about himself. Joe Slade, they tell him, is the main character in a series of detective novels by an author named Ben Westing. These strangers—who turn out to be a wizard, an elf, and a dwarf—are characters in a fantasy novel by an author named Howard Zagny. “You’ve already seen we are able to escape from our own book,” the wizard tells Joe. “With your help, we will escape from all books. We’ll go there. To the world where the books are written. There we will confront our authors and live lives that we will write with our own hands.” What follows is their escapade across genres—romance, sci-fi, horror, and more—to literally meet their makers. Along the way, Joe has the opportunity to defy the tropes he’s been shackled with and find out just what sort of hero he really is. Sharp writes in a mercurial prose that morphs to fit each genre the characters travel through. He finds creative ways to portray these metafictional shifts, as here, when the narration switches from Joe’s first-person perspective to the third person: “Joe could not shake an unnameable strangeness that had settled upon him. His thoughts seemed more distant, less audible within his own mind. It was as though some kind of mental fog had settled upon his consciousness and would not relinquish its grip.” The book is clever, amusing, surprising, and genuinely fun: an old-time adventure that will keep readers on their toes while leaving the door open for any and all possibilities.
A lovingly designed metafictional sendup of genre novels.Pub Date: May 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71953-015-6
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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