A man contemplates getting back at the novelist who exploited his life in fiction.
Koch’s third novel translated into English (Summer House with Swimming Pool, 2015, etc.) is partly a satire of the petty grievances of the literary world, partly a vision of sociopathic cruelty, though ultimately a little too much of both. The “Mr. M” of the title has had a long career writing novels that have garnered heaps of acclaim but modest sales—with the exception of Payback, his bestselling fictionalization of a much-discussed news story about a pair of teens who were accused of killing a teacher who’d had an affair with one of them. Herman, one of the students allegedly involved, hasn’t been able to let go of the experience decades later; indeed, he lives in the same building as the writer, and as M makes the publicity rounds for a new novel, Herman is increasingly invasive of his personal space, stalking his wife and posing as a journalist to ask some pointed questions of him. Koch (via Garrett’s translation) does a fine job of capturing Herman’s arrogant, narcissistic swagger (“I have certain plans for you…”; “Who are you trying to impress…?”), but he wisely pivots away from Herman’s narration to include multiple perspectives—Mr. M, the troubled teacher, and the classmates who witnessed Herman’s high school antics. (He enjoyed taunting a classmate whose mother was dying, for instance.) Koch suggests that in some ways Herman and M are similar—both exploit others’ pasts, have mean streaks (M fantasizes about mass-murdering his readers), and have troubled pasts to cover up. But that argument isn’t wholly persuasive—Herman’s adolescence was crueler—and the layering of Herman’s back story overwhelms the core mystery story of what truly happened with that teacher.
Koch is consistently attuned to our hidden foibles and fakery, which makes for deliberately discomfiting reading. Sleeker writing would enhance its impact.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90332-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Hogarth/Crown
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
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Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in white society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her white persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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