by David Moloney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
Generally beautiful, sometimes unconvincing—very much a debut.
A collection of linked stories that explore an often overlooked class within our criminal justice system: corrections officers.
New Hampshire’s Barker County Correctional Facility, colloquially known as the Barker House, is a squalid, private, for-profit jail staffed by men and women trying to juggle work in the jail—where the general consensus is “this place will change you”—with their angry children, dying parents, second jobs, and DUIs. Most would rather have been police officers but, lacking connections, education, or military experience, settled instead for life in corrections. Some, like Brenner, the only female officer on her shift, are perplexed by “abrasive” officers who consider their jobs a sentence, “every task a trial, every inmate an enemy.” Others, like Kelley, a pacifistic young officer who objects to a beating he witnesses in the House, ultimately do change: Kelley eerily manages to dehumanize inmates while maintaining his nonviolent nature, referring to them only by their inmate numbers. In his daring, important, though at times uneven debut, Moloney, himself a former corrections officer, demonstrates a keen sense for detail and an intimate knowledge of his subject. In one moment he shows us the creativity of the small-scale sadist—Mankins, on the restricted unit, opens the rec yard door on frigid winter mornings when his inmates are trying to enjoy their showers—yet in the next shows us Big Mike, who moonlights as a bouncer at a strip club and whose father is dying of cancer, allowing his female inmates to “wear eye makeup they’d made from colored pencil shavings” on visiting days even though makeup is against the rules. The power of Moloney’s crisp observations, however, is partially diminished by some very careless sentences (“In the way of Tully’s happiness seemed to be his marriage but he would never say”) and his often repetitive story structure. Read the end of the first chapter—in which Mankins, our quiet sadist, towel-dries a crippled, freezing inmate while still not shutting the door—and you’re like Wowzers, that’s complicated, nicely done; but when the same formula is applied to a half-dozen more endings, one begins—in between those brilliant details—to disbelieve the construct.
Generally beautiful, sometimes unconvincing—very much a debut.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-416-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
Share your opinion of this book
More by John Steinbeck
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
More About This Book
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.