by Ellen Bryson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 22, 2010
A rich tapestry of romance, illusory science, criminal trickery and human intrigue. Let the show begin.
A man living among the oddest specimens of humanity questions his inner desires.
It must have been something, America at the end of the Civil War, and debut novelist Bryson imagines it beautifully in her inspired drama about freaks, showmen and the forces that twist our insides. Opening just after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the curtains part to reveal a sideshow within a spectacle, namely the singular attraction that was Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, owned by narcissistic showman P.T. Barnum. Bryson’s narrator is no mundane manifestation: The titular Fortuno has occupied Barnum’s stable as The World’s Thinnest Man for a decade, playing alongside his gargantuan friend Matina and a host of other “Curiosities.” Fortuno even elucidates the class system among “our kind,” cataloguing True Prodigies that diverge inexorably from humanity; Prodigies, like himself, gifted with implausible proportions; and Exotics whose talents accent their peculiarities. “Lowlifes to codfish aristocrats, they’re all alike,” Matina scoffs. “People want to feel shock, envy, and delight. They just use us to fill them up. Which, by the way, is an impossible task.” But Bartholomew is a wonderful character who doesn’t struggle against his self-image but revels in it, challenging audiences with his bravado. “When you look at me, can’t you understand yourself a bit better?” he asks. “The only difference between us is that I do not hide my inner self.” Into this heady stew Bryson pours both mystery and a love story. Fortuno’s curiosity is piqued late one evening when his master furtively escorts a veiled woman into the palace of marvels. Soon after, tempted by the lure of a new costume, Bartholomew agrees to conspire with his manipulative employer, venturing into Chinatown on secret missions and following Iell, the veiled woman, whose secrets may be the most startling of all her brethren.
A rich tapestry of romance, illusory science, criminal trickery and human intrigue. Let the show begin.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9192-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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