Kemske (Lifetime Employment—not reviewed) mines the man- against-machine lode worked by Karel Capek, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and lesser-knowns in a see-through morality tale more notable for set-piece insights than narrative finesse or impact. Though he's head of the near-future consulting firm Information Accuracy, Inc., Donald F. Jones abhors face-to-face communication with subordinates who seem never to understand his objectives and are reluctant to take responsibility for their own decisions. Accordingly, he introduces a computer network whose adaptive, interactive software functions as a perfect supervisor. Having minimized direct human contacts in house and out, the goal- oriented CEO soon presides over a lucrative commercial establishment whose efficiency amazes and gratifies him. For certain IAI underlings, however, the price of progress comes high. Linda Brainwright, the bright, beautiful specialist Jones briefly bedded, is ultimately rejected by the seemingly omniscient feedback system she programmed. The proximate cause of her downfall is a one-night stand with Arthur, a lower-echelon project coordinator who's begun to buckle under the strain of reporting to a virtual boss that unpredictably dispenses praise, blame, and conflicting job assignments through a work-station terminal. That he almost immediately loses control of the self-ordering system does not disturb Jones, whose against-the-touchy-feely-grain goal is an enterprise free of such frictional irritants as personal relationships. Kemske has a state-of-the-art grasp of technology's more ominous implications in the brave new world of business, and his stereotypical characters frequently offer challenging observations (``Fascism, manipulation, management, I can't make these fine semantic distinctions''). But he's not a particularly gifted storyteller, and his cautionary tale simply comes to a dead end rather than an illuminating conclusion.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-945774-22-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
Intelligent, honest, and unsentimental.
Greenwood’s powerful, provocative debut chronicles a desolate childhood and a discomfiting love affair.
Wavy (short for Wavonna) is only 5 when we meet her in 1975, but she’s already been thoroughly traumatized by her meth-addicted mother, Val, whose stint in jail sends the girl to her Aunt Brenda’s house in Tulsa. Wavy barely talks and doesn’t eat—or rather, her cousins discover one night, eats out of the garbage pail when everyone else is asleep. We learn after Val is paroled and reclaims Wavy that Scary Mama has been known to stick fingers down her daughter’s throat to remove “dirty” food and then wash out Wavy’s mouth with Listerine. Her drug-dealing husband, Liam, mostly keeps to his own quarters on their ranch compound; his open infidelities send Val into fits of immobilizing depression and catatonia-inducing substance abuse, while Wavy struggles to take care of baby brother Donal and keep attending school. Only Kellen, a low-level enforcer for Liam who is also the survivor of childhood neglect, shows her any kindness or care. As the years go by in Greenwood’s episodic tale, we see this affection-starved girl and damaged man fall in love. Wavy is only 13 when their relationship turns sexual, and when Aunt Brenda finds out, she labels Kellen a rapist and works to keep them apart. The multiple narrators don’t mince words as they describe a thoroughly sordid milieu and various squalid events that climax in a violent denouement that threatens to separate Wavy and Kellen permanently. Greenwood limns her characters with matter-of-fact empathy, inviting us to respect the resourcefulness and resilience with which Wavy surmounts her dangerously disordered circumstances to craft a life and a love. It’s no storybook romance, but the novel closes on a note of hard-won serenity, with people who deserve a second chance gathered together.
Intelligent, honest, and unsentimental.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07413-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Laymon moves us dazzlingly (and sometimes bewilderingly) from 1964 to 1985 to 2013 and incorporates themes of prejudice,...
A novel within a novel—hilarious, moving and occasionally dizzying.
Citoyen “City” Coldson is a 14-year-old wunderkind when it comes to crafting sentences. In fact, his only rival is his classmate LaVander Peeler. Although the two don’t get along, they’ve qualified to appear on the national finals of the contest "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence," and each is determined to win. Unfortunately, on the nationally televised show, City is given the word “niggardly” and, to say the least, does not provide a “correct, appropriate or dynamic usage” of the word as the rules require. LaVander similarly blows his chance with the word “chitterlings,” so both are humiliated, City the more so since his appearance is available to all on YouTube. This leads to a confrontation with his grandmother, alas for City, “the greatest whupper in the history of Mississippi whuppings.” Meanwhile, the principal at City’s school has given him a book entitled Long Division. When City begins to read this, he discovers that the main character is named City Coldson, and he’s in love with a Shalaya Crump...but this is in 1985, and the contest finals occurred in 2013. (Laymon is nothing if not contemporary.) A girl named Baize Shephard also appears in the novel City is reading, though in 2013, she has mysteriously disappeared a few weeks before City’s humiliation. Laymon cleverly interweaves his narrative threads and connects characters in surprising and seemingly impossible ways.
Laymon moves us dazzlingly (and sometimes bewilderingly) from 1964 to 1985 to 2013 and incorporates themes of prejudice, confusion and love rooted in an emphatically post-Katrina world.Pub Date: June 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-932841-72-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Bolden/Agate
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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