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HONEY, I KILLED THE CATS

Name: HONEY, I KILLED THE CATS
Author: Dorota Maslowska
ISBN: 978-1-941920-82-4

by Dorota Maslowska ; translated by Benjamin Paloff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019

An often obvious, generally unpleasant novel studded with glimmers of brilliance.

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Prizewinning Polish novelist/journalist/playwright Masłowska returns with a grotesque phantasmagoria of consumer excess set in a nightmarish American city.

First published in 2012 and now translated into English by Paloff, this novel is less concerned with plot than with the construction of its relentlessly miserable surreality, a near-future America courtesy of Hieronymus Bosch. But to the extent there is a plot, it is the dissolution of a friendship between two young woman, Farah and Joanne, who had “hit it off fatally right from the get-go.” But then Jo falls in love with a “pathetic—yes, pathetic, in Fah’s opinion—salesman at a kitchen and bath store, allegedly with a degree in Hungarian studies,” ditching Fah for her new coupled life of extreme public displays of affection. This repulses Fah for several reasons—it is not only that, in this new world order, Fah barely exists, but also that Jo has what Fah does not, which is cosmically unfair given that Jo isn’t even attractive. And so Fah is left to traverse the vapid maw of a city mostly alone but having “resolved unequivocally to open herself to the richness of existence” thanks to a book—“A Life Filled With Miracles: Learn to See the Magic of Existence in Just 14 Days, by Manfred Peterson, Ph.D.,” which she’d found, by chance, in her building’s laundry room. Masłowska’s (Snow White and Russian Red, 2005) critique of manic hypercapitalism has the subtlety of a battering ram: The young people who hang out on “Bohemian Street,” for example are viciously wealthy; poverty is now a high-fashion aesthetic. There are ads promising “Free brain reduction with every enlargement (penis or both breasts)” and headlines offering tips for sexier abortions. Mostly, this breezy cynicism is exhausting without feeling especially fresh, but Masłowska does occasionally reach darkly delightful new heights: A description of a trendy cafe offering “little tables where dogs can sit down with their MacBooks” is so absurdly extended—and so deranged in its detail—that it’s genuinely funny. Likewise, her analysis of human behavior is, every so often, shocking in its precision. If only it happened more frequently.

An often obvious, generally unpleasant novel studded with glimmers of brilliance.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-941920-82-4

Page Count: 166

Publisher: Deep Vellum

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SNOW WHITE AND RUSSIAN RED
by Dorota Maslowska & translated by Benjamin Paloff

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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PRECIPICE
by Robert Harris

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ACT OF OBLIVION
by Robert Harris

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V2
by Robert Harris

- BOOK TO SCREEN
20 Adaptations Nominated for Golden Globes

- BOOK TO SCREEN
How Adaptations Fared at the 82nd Golden Globes

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Literary Adaptations Score Multiple Oscar Nods

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.