An earnest but eccentric and aesthetically anarchic take on Christianity’s familiar mythos.
The high-concept Canadian documentarians behind I Live Here (2008) deploy their unique multimedia style in a whimsical biblical allegory.
Advertising is a weird science in its most mundane form, let alone the weird alchemy practiced by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons over the past two decade as The Goggles, multimedia wunderkinds most memorable for the award-winning interactive documentary Welcome to Pine Point and the book I Live Here (2008), which documented life for refugees during wartime. Here they’re aided by filmmaker Bate and digital artist James Kerr (better known as Scorpion Dagger) for a literary amalgamation that is one part John Hughes, a dash of Douglas Coupland, and augmented with a series of .gif animations (which can be viewed through an app) that are fancifully Python-esque. The infrastructure is complicated since the book is fashioned around 16-year-old Darryl's messy, overstuffed personal diary, which chronicles his adolescent angst and potential triumph thanks to the arrival of a dodgy messiah. Darryl is a bit of a cipher, uncomfortable with expressing his thoughts and feelings except to his friend Wade, who “died peacefully in his sleep while hanging from a rafter with a rope tied around his neck.” His rare moments of solace lie in his band, “a bitchin’ power duo” propelled by his drummer, Mary, and egged on by their friend Jude. The milieu for this teenage daydream isn’t John Hughes' Shermer, Illinois, but the Naz—that’s Nazareth, as in “Jesus of,” not the Scottish heavy metal band. The book’s precipitating event is the arrival of Jay, son of God and the spark Darryl needs to transform his White Stripes–esque duo into a full-fledged band, Iron Messiah, which unites Darryl and Jay with the power of ROCK. It wouldn’t be a teenage daydream without some angst-y drama, which erupts when Jay takes over Darryl’s band, going so far as to replace him with a doppelgänger, while Jude aims to make some kind of artistic statement by blowing up Darryl’s only other confidant, a tree named Rooty. All of these shenanigans are illustrated with artful but moderately disturbing renditions inspired by medieval paintings and paired with an original heavy metal score.
An earnest but eccentric and aesthetically anarchic take on Christianity’s familiar mythos.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-3741-1531-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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