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THE INGENIOUS EDGAR JONES

Name: THE INGENIOUS EDGAR JONES
Author: Elizabeth Garner
ISBN: 978-0-307-40899-0

by Elizabeth Garner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2009

Disturbing, but not compelling.

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Garner (Nightdancing, 2003) returns with the tale of a mysterious, talented boy living in 19th-century England.

The night Edgar Jones is born, a meteor shower lights up the skies above Oxford University. His father William dotes on him, while his mother Eleanor worries about the innate wildness she sees in her only child. The author can’t seem to decide on a protagonist, leaving readers without intimate knowledge of or empathy for any one of the Joneses. Curious, precocious and determined, Edgar takes on an almost devilish quality as he grows up, parlaying an apprenticeship at an iron forge into a position at the university, where his father works as a night watchman. The professor who shepherds him into Oxford has dubious intentions, but Edgar falls in love with the ironwork involved in creating the professor’s pet project, a museum of natural history. Meanwhile, Eleanor, feeling isolated from her husband and son, starts a sewing business with the help of a benefactress. As the business becomes profitable, she acquires a new sense of independence, though the trials Edgar’s mischief brings her, as well as her relationship with an increasingly angry and erratic husband, are endless sources of angst. Garner doesn’t fully explore the motivations of her characters, who seem like caricatures. Edgar is certainly bizarre, but he is neither interesting nor likable. He is not scary enough to frighten, clever enough to admire or kind enough to champion. Choosing iron as the source of his inspiration poses a brave challenge, but the theme is painfully over-romanticized, and the fantastical elements require too much suspension of belief, especially at the end. Striving for attractively old-fashioned lyricism, the prose seems instead fabricated and childish. There are some thrilling scenes as the plot twists nicely toward the finale, but by then most readers are unlikely to care much anymore.

Disturbing, but not compelling.

Pub Date: May 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-307-40899-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LOVE JUNKIE

by Robert Plunket ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 1992

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Mimi Smithers knew right from childhood in Lubbock, Texas, that she was destined for an extraordinary life—and she gets just what she's always wanted in this uneven, often sexually explicit, comedy of manners by Plunket (My Search for Warren Harding, 1983). Ambitious Mimi, a Bronxville matron who loves to shop, tells her own story, beginning with a disastrous party for an arts group at which Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III is the honored guest. Bored with suburban life and husband Boyce (who, for the necessary plot resolution, works for Union Carbide), Mimi tries analysis, but a chance encounter with debonair Tom Potts while shopping is more what's needed. Tom has his own firm and asks Mimi to be his assistant. Mimi, smitten by Tom, is thrilled, but Tom is gay, which takes Mimi a while to figure out (she tends to be a little slow), though that doesn't stop her from having fun as she accompanies him and his friends around 1980's gay New York. At a picnic she meets gay-porn star Joel, an ambitious hunk, who employs her to run his profitable mail-order business. Besotted, she funds the great porn film that Joel writes and directs, and gets to know a lot of lowlife people—but then the film flops, Joel dumps her, and Mimi's left with the bills. Rescue is at hand, however: husband Boyce, who's been working in India, conveniently dies in the Bhopal disaster. With the money Union Carbide pays out to her, Mimi can pay her debts, buy an apartment on Sutton Place, and, with Tom now dead from AIDS, set out to take over his job. ``It was going to be fabulous,'' she trills. An absurd plot, obvious satire, and humor more sleazy than black—plus a heroine who's just plain dumb, and unappealingly so. Thin camp.

Pub Date: April 22, 1992

ISBN: 0-06-016660-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BONES & ALL

by Camille DeAngelis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

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Love is challenging for any species—but things get more complicated when you’re a ghoul who wants to eat anyone who gets close to you.

In DeAngelis’ (Petty Magic, 2010, etc.) third novel, 16-year-old Maren is determined to track down her father after her mother, who clearly loves her but is scared for her own life, abandons her, leaving behind some money and the girl's birth certificate, which includes some important information: her father’s name. Maren started eating people when she was a little kid. She devoured the kind babysitter who showed her affection, and things only got worse from there. She ate a boy who befriended her at summer camp. She ate the son of her mother’s boss during a party. She ate other people. It isn’t until she sets out on the road to find her father that she finally meets one of her own kind. Sully is a talkative man, and there’s something a bit sinister about him, too. He weaves a rope out of hair from people he's eaten. Maren decides to find her dad by herself, and at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the country, she finally meets another cannibal closer to her own age. Lee is someone she quickly relates to. His first kill was his babysitter, too. But as she tells him: “I make friends…I just can’t keep them.” Lee joins Maren on her quest to find her father, and a good portion of the book is about their developing relationship. Even though there are entertaining moments, DeAngelis’ prose is run-of-the-mill and her observations, somewhat obvious.

The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.