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SONG OF NIGHT

From a Caribbean-born writer (Fire in the Canes, 1997), a maudlin tale of a passionate woman whose strong emotions eventually lead to tragedy. The story of Cyan, or —Night,— the young black woman who loves to walk along the beach in starlight, is set in Barbados, a place where tourists are the new imperialists. Their hotels defile the ocean with sewage, their needs push the local men into menial jobs, and they use the women as prostitutes. They create an angry resentment among the locals, but few of them react as violently as the heavily pregnant Cyan. As the story begins, she has arranged to meet Amanda, an African-American tourist, who wants to buy her handiwork. Later, Cyan’s neighbors see her being taken from her home by police. (Cyan’s father, Steel, was hanged when she was 18 for murdering a man who—d been flirting with his wife.) The story of Cyan’s journey to her arrest is told in luminous prose that evokes the island but is less successful in creating credible characters. Cyan’s mother, Obe, is a study in contradictions: she fled an abusive man before marrying Steel; she burned Cyan’s hand as punishment when a neighbor accused the girl of lying; and when Steel was buried, she took up with other men. Cyan, angry and hurt, both loves and hates her mother. After they quarrel, Obe moves out and, along the way, works for a local doctor and his African- American wife; falls in love with Breeze, a local hustler; and then, deserted by him, begs tourists for money. A brief reunion with Breeze leads to pregnancy and a decision to give her baby to a visiting African-American. When a distraught Cyan changes her mind, though, it’s too late—the child is gone. Cyan has no choice but to complete the cycle of destruction that began before she was born. Despite some fine passages, generally overwritten and overwrought.

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 1998

ISBN: 1-56947-122-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Soho

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

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THE SECRET HISTORY

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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OF MICE AND MEN

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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