An astonishingly ambitious first novel from Mexican writer and former scientist Rebolledo, winner of the Mobil Corporation's 15th annual Pegasus Prize for Literature. It's the story, set in 18th-century Europe (mainly Paris) and Mexicoand, in part, in the futureof the varied education enjoyed and suffered by Fausto Rasero, an intellectually curious young Spaniard, mysteriously bald since birth, whose innate sophistication and unconventional magnetism bring him into intriguingly close contact with many of the great figures of the Enlightenment. Fausto is befriended by Diderot but modestly declines to write an introduction for the EncyclopÇdie. He becomes an intimate of Voltaire's. He hears the moppet prodigy Mozart play. A climax of sorts is reached when Fausto debates political theory with Robespierre, Rousseau, and Danton, among others, just before the Revolution drives him out of Paris. Other climaxes occur during Fausto's lovemaking, in whichin an amusing lift from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbowhis orgasms (with Madame de Pompadour, among many, many others) trigger visions of violence and carnage that we recognize as genocidal refinements achieved by modern warfarers, and from which Fausto concludes: ``Human inventiveness is inexhaustible. We can do anything we want to.'' That seems to be the aesthetic that powers Rasero, an imposing omnium-gatherum that vibrates with energy and purpose despite its longueurs. They are unfortunately many: a plethora of just barely dramatized theoretical chemistry and Newtonian physics, for example, and a gratingly redundant succession of sex scenes all but indistinguishable one from the other. Nonetheless, the novel teems with witty conversation and vigorous incident and is further buoyed by such pleasures as Rebolledo's ingenious characterization of Voltaire as a mysterious hybrid compounded of paranoia, moral courage, hypochondria, and indomitable vitality. An exhilarating, frustrating mixture of originality and regurgitated arcana. It's filled with quaint and curious lore, steam-powered conveyances, and state-of-the-art engines of destruction, but it smells of the lamp.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-8071-2004-9
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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