Surreal notions and landscape, grounded by the chic gadgets and intrigue of an espionage tale.
In this debut paranormal-infused thriller, competing intelligence agencies use metaphysical technology while facing off in a realm beyond the corporeal world.
Professor Robert Shilling was 9 when his parents died in a car wreck. Believing there’s a chance he can still communicate with them, he places FieldREGs (random-event generators) around his New Jersey childhood home. Rob seems to have unknowingly piqued the interest of the NSA’s Gen. Donald Flint, who’s determined to get his hands on the professor’s files. He sends rookie agent Amanda Denoyer, Rob’s new postdoc at Duke University, to find the files. What exactly Flint wants isn’t immediately clear, but it’s related to his project, Celestial Destiny. He’s furthermore impatiently awaiting completion of the enigmatic imaging cube from postdoc Vadim Gostkov. The Russian’s heading the NSA-sponsored research group at MIT professor Dirk Jenner’s Institute for Transformative Research in Metamaterials—metamaterials that “exhibit properties not found in nature.” Meanwhile, John Pierce, who works at the research institute, has an appointment with psychologist Dr. Helene Bertrand for the hallucinations he’s been experiencing. Helene’s psychiatrist colleague Paul Greer, however, has seen patients (John’s co-workers) with identical hallucinatory symptoms, leading him to speculate they’re all seeing physical manifestations (ghosts, perhaps?). When someone winds up in a coma after an unexplained heart attack, it doesn’t prevent the person’s abduction. But these apparent kidnappers, traversing a plane not of the known world, haven’t seized the physical body; they’ve taken the soul. The resultant rescue operation precipitates a battle in a strange, unfamiliar realm. Engelmayr’s book is an impressive fusion of paranormal novel and techno-thriller. Amanda, for one, in her first NSA mission, has a run-in with a Russian agent, while an intelligence agency is intent on destroying Celestial Destiny. These take place within a story brimming with metaphysical terminology, like the silver cords linking people outside their bodies to their physical selves. Characters often speak in hypotheticals, as they’re discussing concepts that are abstract, primarily unknown, or written off as pseudoscience. Fortunately, the crisp dialogue takes an intelligent, scientific approach. Flint, for example, proffers: “It’s a classic chicken-or-the-egg phenomenon. Do crustal magnetic anomalies associated with iron ore alter our biological circuitry, making us think we’re seeing ghosts? Or do ghosts tend to congregate around iron deposits?” Similarly, Engelmayr simplifies the plot by separating science and religion; Paul stresses proving “not the afterlife” but “an afterlife,” while Jenner differentiates the out-of-body soul from the biblical soul. The 2012-set story is augmented with the incorporation of real-life events, from impending Hurricane Sandy to people’s fears that the world will end before the year’s over. There are effective reveals, such as what the imaging cube does, and a final act, on the other plane, in which some of the threats aren’t exactly human. But while characters’ back stories are generally solid, a few are lacking. Helene, in particular, was traumatized by a 1980s horror film; for readers who haven’t seen it, vague details like “scary storm clouds” won’t register.
Surreal notions and landscape, grounded by the chic gadgets and intrigue of an espionage tale.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-59566-4
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Engelmayr
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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