A sometimes-thrilling, if occasionally odd, look at the convergence of the old, the new, and the fantastically high-tech.
The third novel in Batchelder’s (Soul Intent, 2009, etc.) series concerning the commercial side of the everlasting soul.
The basis of the company Soul Identity was originally fairly simple: its customers could plan their future lives by tracking their souls as they progressed through cycles of reincarnation. More practically, it allowed them to sock away their assets for their own future use instead of resigning them to other people upon their own deaths. The company tracks human souls with an eye scanner, but it eventually finds other uses for their incredible technology. For example, if a soul can be tracked through time, why not use it to see whom you loved in a past life? Although Rain Ekko and Val Nikolskaya inhabit different bodies in present-day Seattle, the two souls were once united in matrimony in revolutionary Cuba. Their reunion in the present day makes for a good commercial for Soul Identity, but the reality of their marriage proves to be most unpleasant. As their union disintegrates, the attractive, yoga-fit Val goes in search of her former lover, Scott Waverly, a security consultant who served as the hero of the first two books in this series. This installment begins with Scott missing in action, although he tried before the start of this book to give Val a warning regarding a threat to her own safety. After she teams up with Scott’s parents (who also work at his consulting company) and Rain’s feisty grandfather Mikk, the search is on—and danger is near. The plot incorporates flashbacks to former lives, and the immediacy of its technological advancements is reminiscent of later-period William Gibson. The fact that Scott’s doting parents are present, however, gives the tale a somewhat bizarre twist: how many heroines have said, “I’ll grill his parents about it later,” as Val does when wondering about a peculiarity in Scott’s behavior? The other supporting characters sometimes prove to be a bit silly, such as a man with a British accent who mutters “Bollocks” and “Bloody hell” in quick succession. Fans of the series who have followed Scott this far, though, will still likely be eager to discover his fate and take note of new developments as the story closes the gap between past and present.
A sometimes-thrilling, if occasionally odd, look at the convergence of the old, the new, and the fantastically high-tech.Pub Date: April 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9798056-4-6
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Netleaves
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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