A stylish novel from a fine comedic storyteller who hopefully has more than one book in him.
Skinner’s debut novel is a clever, funny chronicle of an apocalypse narrowly averted and of greatness diverted.
Franklin Bartholomew Horvath is a loser from a long line of losers. But at the outset of this story, he proclaims that his time as an inconsequential cog is about to come to an end and that he may be the savior of mankind. He’s about to enter the office of the former United Church of Satan in Berry, Indiana (they now call themselves the Church of the Epistemological Emendation to avoid harassment from the locals). He has a 9 mm handgun hidden in his pants and his 12-year-old son, Michael, nicknamed “Sparky,” in tow. Skinner then tells the story of what led Frankie to this desperate point. When Frankie was 12 years old, his father had an epiphany that there would be a “Great Horvath,” an exceptional person, in the family. Young Frankie is crushed to learn, though, that it won’t be him—but it could be his son. When Frankie finally has a kid, the local Rev. Phipps declares little Sparky the Antichrist. Frankie doesn’t believe it, but his wife buys it immediately. So he and his wife try to save the world by raising an unremarkable child, addling him with sugar and television and doing everything they can to keep him from excelling. (It’s also perfect revenge against Frankie’s father, who was counting on Sparky to be the Great Horvath.) This eventually leads to a showdown with the Satanists, which Frankie believes could decide the fate of humanity. Overall, this is a fantastically inventive story with plenty of fun twists that’s told with great humor. In Frankie, Skinner has created his own version of Ignatius J. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (1980); Frankie is a bit more self-aware than Toole’s protagonist, but he’s no less deluded. The structure of the novel does make it seem like a bit of a shaggy dog story at times, and the author holds back a few details for a setup in a way that seems like cheating. However, the payoff is worth it.
A stylish novel from a fine comedic storyteller who hopefully has more than one book in him.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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