A well-crafted and engaging novel, even when the protagonist’s actions are hard to take.
A debut novel about a disaffected slacker who hides her troubles behind a witty facade.
Jane has a boring job as a research telemarketer, calling people from a list every day and asking them about their pets. To keep things interesting, she changes her name for each caller and deviates from the script. She does that in real life, too: when her conspiracy theorist roommate, Keats, and his girlfriend, Ivy, ask her questions about her life, she makes things up on the spot that she thinks will satisfy them. The face that she presents to the world is that of a woman winning her struggles—but, in reality, she’s not. She’s outwardly charming but broken inside. One of the lies that she tells is that she got the scars on her knees from playing hockey as a kid, but the truth is that she cut them in her yard, kneeling in powdered glass; because she couldn’t count on her abusive parents, she went to a neighbor’s house when she realized that she was injured. Jane is also using drugs again, which she’s trying to hide from her probation counselor, and she’s even been cutting herself. Austin infuses the character of Jane with an easy charm; many of her answers to Keats and Ivy’s questions are clever and sardonic, as when she tells Ivy that her parents are dead: “They both died of a pretty rare disease. It was eventually named after them, actually. Jerry and Sheryl Syndrome. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” But the author effectively undercuts this image by also depicting Jane’s self-destructive actions, from hanging out with a co-worker she calls “heroin-face” to repeatedly calling the same person during her telemarketing job, even though that person has been threatening to kill her. She’s self-harmful but also resourceful and capable; as a result, readers will find it uncomfortable to root for her, but they’ll also find it hard not to. As the story twists and turns in unexpected ways, it moves from amusing to terrifying—a transition that Austin also handles expertly.
A well-crafted and engaging novel, even when the protagonist’s actions are hard to take.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holland House
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2017
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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