by Emmi Itäranta ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2014
Itäranta's fine debut is lyrically rendered, vivid and engaging despite a bit too much philosophy and a less-than-satisfying...
Delicate medium-future fable that first appeared in Finland in 2012.
Global warming has destroyed the old world and its order. Wars were fought over energy resources and water, rendering Norway and Sweden uninhabitable. Now the empire of New Qian rules Asia and much of Europe. In the far north of occupied Finland, where even in winter the temperature rarely drops below 50 degrees and water shortages are endemic, 17-year-old Noria Kaitio studies under her father to become a tea master. Not only must Noria learn the ceremony, with its underlying philosophy and ethics, but she must be introduced to her father’s greatest secret: the location of the hidden spring from which the water for the teahouse derives. The region’s military chief, Maj. Bolin—a family friend and frequent guest—has been protecting the teahouse, but as water shortages become ever more acute, Bolin’s successor, Cmdr. Taro, proves less accommodating. After soldiers dig up the grounds and trash the teahouse, finding nothing, Noria’s mother leaves to take up a position at a university in China, hoping Noria will join her. Meanwhile, Noria’s friend Sanja, a young woman with an extraordinary talent for fixing broken junk recovered from ancient landfills, recovers what she fails to recognize as a CD player. In the same landfill, Noria finds a disk, which they are able to play and whose contents hint at an extraordinary and dangerous secret. After her father dies, Noria makes plans to learn the truth.
Itäranta's fine debut is lyrically rendered, vivid and engaging despite a bit too much philosophy and a less-than-satisfying ending.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-232615-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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PROFILES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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