A drossy embarrassment from former art dealer and recovering heroin addict Ramus, a man who reportedly lost a king's ransom (five million) when the bottom fell out of the New York art market in the 1980s, but got a fifth of it back for this debut novel. Adrian Sellars, a junkie who's leveraged his gallery into major debt, harbors an attraction to dicey get-rich-quick schemesall hallmarks of the go-go '80s art-dealer affliction. Not entirely dissolute, however, Sellars shelters a secret heart of gold and at least a strand of moral fiber, though the Japanese gangsters to whom he's been selling forgeries of French Impressionist masterpieces couldn't care less about his ethics. Matters get nasty when Sellars's forger meets a violent death at the hands of a pair of street hoods, who destroy a copy of Monet's ``Water Lilies'' before they murder the unfortunate painter and remove his ears. Sellars's Japanese connection, a remorseless evildoer named Tanaka, puts the dealer on the clock to locate a replacement Monet, which spins Sellars into a downward spiral of hustling and heroin abuse that culminates in the killing of his partner. Desperate, Sellars turns to his foxy assistant, Devon Berenson, for help, and she comes through in spades: Not only does she hide him while he goes cold turkey and then sleep with him, but she convinces him to visit a patrician art-restorer who provides a real Monet as bait for the Japanese. Ramus mates the cultural paranoia of Reservoir Dogs with the adolescent sleuthing of Hardy Boys before staging a prolonged final showdown between Sellars and the Japanese heavies that features an assassination, a double-cross, and a cameo by retired tennis star John McEnroe. A juvenile caper failing to pass itself off as a cautionary tale. (First printing of 125,000; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017664-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Irving's novels, which often begin in autobiographical commonplace, get transformed along the way: sometimes into fairy tale (The Hotel New Hampshire), sometimes into modern-day ironic fable (The World According to Garp). This one—set in New Hampshire in the 50's and 60's—is a little of both, but not enough of either: its tone is finally too self-righteous to be fully convincing as fiction. In 1953, Owen Meany—a physically tiny man with a big voice who believes he's God's instrument—kills his best friend's mother with a foul ball. His best friend, Johnny Wheelwright, is the book's narrator: from Toronto, where he has lived for some 20 odd years, he tells the story of Owen Meany, who has a voice that "comes from God," of his own "Father Hunt"—Wheelwright is the product of his mother's "little fling"—and of growing up in the Sixties, when some people believed in destiny, others in coincidence. Sweetly moralistic, Wheelwright, who became "a Christian because of Owen Meany," sometimes launches into tirades about Reagan and the Iran/contra fiasco, but mostly he tells Owen's story: Meany, who always writes and speaks in the uppercase, is the real mouthpiece here, though Wheelwright is his Nick Carraway. Meany, after hitting "that fated baseball," no longer believes in accidents: his parents, in the granite business, convince him that he's the product of a virgin birth (we learn late in the book). His sense of destiny serves him well: not only does he play the Christ child in a Christmas pageant and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but his pontificating "Voice" becomes a great power at the prep school he attends with Johnny (there are some marvelous sendups of prep school), and he "sees" the circumstances and the date of his own death. After much inventive detail (as well as much slapstick and whimsy dealing with Meany's tiny size and strange voice) and the working-out of a three-way relationship involving Meany, Johnny, and his cousin Hester, Meany saws off Johnny's finger in order to keep him out of Vietnam, dies as he foresaw, and reveals to Johnny from beyond the grave that the local Congregationalist minister is his real father. Vintage Irving—though here Dickensian coincidence, an Irving staple, becomes the subject of the book rather than a technique. The result is a novel that seems sincere but turns too bombastic and insistent in its opinions about literature, religion, and politics.
Pub Date: March 30, 1989
ISBN: 0679642595
Page Count: -
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
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