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THE LOST LETTERS OF WILLIAM WOOLF

Name: THE LOST LETTERS OF WILLIAM WOOLF
Author: Helen Cullen
ISBN: 978-1-525-89208-0

by Helen Cullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 4, 2019

An eccentric novel with less whimsy than angst.

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A dead-letter detective rethinks his life when he reads a series of letters addressed to "My Great Love" in Cullen’s debut.

William Woolf is one of a small handful of postal workers who attend to dead letters, letters that for whatever reason have gotten lost in the system. His particular penchant is for the "supernaturals," letters addressed to mythical, fictional, or otherworldly recipients. When he finds a letter addressed to "My Great Love" in his pile one day, he slowly begins a journey of rediscovery in his own life. The letter writer is addressing her future love whom she’s not yet met, and in her, William sees both the vitality of young love and the difference between this vibrancy and the state of his own marriage. His relationship with Clare, his wife of 14 years, has been getting rockier and rockier, and this echo of what they once had brings it to the forefront. Should he find the mysterious letter writer? Should he try to reconnect with his wife? The novel is exceedingly well-written and flows incredibly well. Despite the quirkiness implied by the setting of the dead-letter office, the story is focused much more on William and Clare’s marital problems than anything that’s happening at William’s job. There are chapters told from both William's and Clare’s points of view, although more frequently William's. Though Cullen attempts to show that both spouses are somewhat at fault for their situation, Clare is a less sympathetic character; she seems unaware for most of the book of the unrealistic standards she is imposing on her husband. A scene of William reuniting an important package with its recipient is quite moving, and the lack of more scenes showing the pathos of William’s work is unfortunate.

An eccentric novel with less whimsy than angst.

Pub Date: June 4, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-525-89208-0

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Graydon House

Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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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.