An engrossing but tongue-in-cheek drama that, even at its most dramatic, will leave readers smiling.
A Spokane college graduate searches for wealth and fame in LA but finds only a string of dead-end jobs and outlandish individuals in Jans’ witty debut drama.
In 1987, Jack Fitzpatrick’s plans to be rich and famous are off to a good start. Beverly Hills talent agent Alain Michaels tells Jack that he can find him work as a model in California. But when the modeling gig doesn’t pan out, Jack’s more determined than ever to make it on his own instead of returning to Spokane. He stays with a friend and runs through a few temp jobs, finally finding success as a bond broker. Jack makes good money at bond firm Freedom Capital Markets, but he soon realizes that he wants to share it with someone. There are more pressing issues for Jack, however, once he finds himself behind bars. The author’s Bukowski-esque tale has an ordinary protagonist immersed in extraordinary circumstances. Jack’s escape from his Spokane roots, for instance, is sublimely epitomized by Mrs. Pohlkiss, an affluent neighbor who looks down on him and who’s immediately on his mind at the slightest sign of failure. Likewise, Jack, while certainly not naïve, is faced with obstacles he’s never considered—complacency or boredom with a job and a revolving door of co-workers, some of them friends who leave too soon and a shady few who are considerably less friendly. Jack’s nonchalant narration manages to take the bite out of the story’s darker bits, like the protagonist’s eventual arrest and incarceration, as well as the toilet humor. Other characters, too, have their comic moments: Noah’s wife, a millionaire by inheritance, still demands that her husband get a job. Jans wisely saves details about Jack’s dog until later in the story. The revelation comes about the time readers’ sympathy for the protagonist may be waning since he starts dating an Asian woman simply because he’s tired of having sex with white women. Jack’s goal continually changes throughout the novel—he wants fame, success, and maybe even a wife—but what he truly craves is finally answered in a satisfying coda that’s both over-the-top and a little endearing.
An engrossing but tongue-in-cheek drama that, even at its most dramatic, will leave readers smiling.Pub Date: April 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-578-15215-8
Page Count: 203
Publisher: Sheabeau Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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