GOOD NIGHT, MR. WODEHOUSE

Name: GOOD NIGHT, MR. WODEHOUSE
Author: Faith Sullivan
ISBN: 978-1-57131-111-5

by Faith Sullivan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2015

Nell’s life experiences read like her book collection—some are part of a series, some stand alone, and all are ultimately...

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More than 40 years of history bookend a lifelong love affair with reading for the resilient heroine of Sullivan’s latest novel set in Harvester, Minnesota.

Nell Stillman gets the shock of her life when her husband, Herbert, dies at the age of 35, leaving Nell penniless. Sullivan (What a Woman Must Do, 2000, etc.) tempers the harsh realities of widowhood at the turn of the 20th century with the kindness of Nell’s small-town neighbors. The wealthy Lundeen family offers Nell a job as a public school teacher, while Nell’s younger cousin, Elvira, moves in to help her care for her infant son. The rest of the book covers Nell’s life from that point until her death many years later, which is foretold in an obituary in the first chapter. Nell’s friends and family members precede her in death as they would in real life—some get sick, some go off to war, and others drop dead without any foreshadowing. In the works of British novelist P.G. Wodehouse, however, Nell discovers a “world that provided all that the so-called real world withheld—most especially, friends who didn’t leave.” With all the buildup, a more detailed discussion of Wodehouse's novels would have been appreciated. But Nell's enthusiasm for his books evokes a simpler time when reading and friendship could ward off despair. Nell manages to find hope—even love—in every stage of her life, the most satisfying of which is her interaction with her favorite author.

Nell’s life experiences read like her book collection—some are part of a series, some stand alone, and all are ultimately comforting and timeless.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-57131-111-5

Page Count: 456

Publisher: Milkweed

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
RUBY & ROLAND
by Faith Sullivan

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WHAT A WOMAN MUST DO
by Faith Sullivan

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THE EMPRESS OF ONE
by Faith Sullivan

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.