Read this book to admire Hicks’ mastery of language, for the titillating sexual references and for the interesting...
Hicks delivers a postmodern novel likely to appeal to a segment of sophisticated 21st-century readers.
The unnamed narrator was born to a drug-addled woman, Martha, who gave him up to her girlfriend Marleen for adoption. Wade, who is into music and drug-dealing, lives with Marleen and serves as a sort-of stepfather (and perhaps biological father) to said narrator (let’s call him S.N.). Wade plans to go to Berlin to become a DJ. S.N. has many orgasms. Wade goes to Berlin. Story ends. Oversimplified? Yes, but not by much. Do not expect a plot. Interspersed with flashes of brilliant writing, this book is a page-turner only in the let’s-get-this-over-with sense of the phrase. S.N. isn’t a bad person, but who cares about his sexual activities (they’re not even exploits)? Who cares that Wanda wants him to ejaculate for target practice? For almost half a page, S.N. plays with a pile of his dandruff and loose hair, imagining them to be comets and stars. Surprisingly, that brings this review to something positive. Hicks is a terrific writer who can craft a simile with the best of them. Some of his wordplay makes the read almost worth the while (“icicles hanging from its grille like drool from a Saint Bernard”), but then he gets artsy, filling pages with erudite references that seem designed only to impress. The main issue isn’t his writing but his storytelling. Readers expect a progression: S.N. wants something important (other than sex, which is much too easy). He encounters obstacles and shows his mettle by how he faces them. An antagonist has conflicting wants. Ultimately, S.N. either triumphs or fails, and we see what, besides testicular tissue, he is made of.
Read this book to admire Hicks’ mastery of language, for the titillating sexual references and for the interesting characters. But if you want a story with a point, Hicks misses the target.Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56689-297-1
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
