Debut author Hoover’s intensely personal, wryly playful chronicle of his internal journey through the landscapes of his confused mind during an extended hospitalization for sepsis and toxic shock syndrome.
Hoover describes his experiences without the trappings of hallucination: no soft, fuzzy imagery or language evoking fugue states, but rather a knack for clever worldbuilding and the relentless coloring of dream logic. In this curious blend of medical memoir and magical realism, Hoover lays down a variety of memories and hallucinations. He imagines himself not in Charlotte, N.C. where he lives and is from, but in Manhattan, escaping there after being reconstructed with chicken legs and half a face at a rogue Confederate hospital full of body parts on conveyor belts. He abandons his wife on a South Dakota tarmac and greets the birth of a child who’s actually a tiny bean. Later, he sees his wife’s death written on the monitor at the foot of his bed and, in South Dakota, escapes attacks by Dog People and Native American boys with broken glass. As Hoover gradually becomes more lucid, his memories turn toward petty frustrations with hospital staff, medications and his body’s own limitations; although the same sense of humor runs through the writing, these passages feel more interested in amusing readers than the exuberantly creative earlier chapters. Chapter headers reference information about sepsis—“Supplemental oxygen should be supplied to all patients with sepsis and oxygenation should be monitored continuously with pulse oximetry”—and provide other keys to his personality through lyrics from U2, the Beatles and others. Aside from an assortment of crude black-and-white illustrations, Hoover offers refreshingly pure, imaginative storytelling, free of the musings on mortality, broader criticisms of the medical system or feel-good survivor’s advice often found in patient memoirs. Yet at more than 500 pages, the book is an exercise in completist documentation; a more tightly edited version could still offer readers a strong sense of his character as he traverses the minefields of his internal universe.
A fascinating tour through the escapist fantasies of an everyday brain in an exceptional crisis.
Pub Date: March 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492966944
Page Count: 590
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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