A great comic novel and a huge leap forward for one of America’s most underrated and accomplished writers.
The culture of pharmaceutical overkill is the subject—and target—of this high-energy fifth novel from the little-known comic surrealist whose best books (American Goliath, 1998, etc.) rival the late 20th-century antic fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Stanley Elkin.
Its protagonist—and victim—is Simon Apple, whose uniquely embattled life (shaped by the unforeseen effects of prescribed medications) unrolls before him when he’s on death row awaiting execution for a “murder” suspiciously linked to the very pharmaceutical company responsible for Simon’s alarming bodily transformations. As Jacobs juxtaposes the story of Simon’s life with details of his incarceration, the worst excesses of corporate greed and malfeasance, the cult of fame and the danger zones of sex and commitment are skewered with a ferocious energy that recalls the genial albeit pitch-black madness of Catch-22 and the weirdly wonderful new science of H.G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay. As Simon is successively afflicted with “explosive growth,” the possession of (first) antlers then gills, penile contraction and expansion, electronically mischievous flatulence and other arcane dysfunctions, his usefulness as poster boy for corporate behemoth Regis Pharmaceuticals is pronounced dead. And CEO Regis Van Clay, an egomaniacal masochist of hilariously epic dimensions, schemes to erase the blot on his company’s escutcheon that perpetually ailing Simon has become. At times this novel’s ebullient particulars threaten to overwhelm the reader, but beating beneath its manic surface (like Simon’s unstoppable heart) is a brilliant expressionistic portrayal of an all-too-human sufferer “doomed to live life at arm’s length, a stranger to everyone including himself.” Despite numerous antecedents and influences—besides those aforementioned, there are echoes of Richard Condon, S.J. Perelman, James Purdy’s bizarre bildungsroman Malcolm and Katherine Dunn’s even more bizarre masterpiece Geek Love—Jacobs’s monstrous satire is a truly original work.
A great comic novel and a huge leap forward for one of America’s most underrated and accomplished writers.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-96-341851-7
Page Count: 392
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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