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DESIRE

This cross-continental tale of Belgian gamblers seeking their fortunes in Las Vegas is the latest (1994) novel from the internationally acclaimed Flemish author of The Sorrow of Belgium (1990) and The Swordfish (p. 239). It's a fragmented story that begins in a bar called ``The Unicorn,'' whose regulars include Claus's unnamed narrator and a group of cronies burdened with colorful monikers (Felix the Cat, Rev'em-up Red, and so forth) who seem to have been transplanted to Europe from Cannery Row. Two of them, dark, brooding (half- Portuguese) Michel and enormously overweight Jake, impulsively light out for America, first to Los Angeles, then eastward to Vegas and the gaming tables. As the keen, ferretlike Michel and ``the sluggish, sleeping giant'' who accompanies him make their way through the various temptations offered by their newfound land, Claus builds a hilarious picture of southwestern American neon splendor (several abrasive hookers make vivid cameo appearances, and a Christian fundamentalist rancher takes Jake and Michel to a revival meeting that features an aging, foulmouthed Jerry Lee Lewis). These sequences are variously reminiscent of the inspired demolitions of trash-culture Americana accomplished decades ago by Evelyn Waugh and Nabokov, as well as Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust. But there's more to the novel: sporadic returns back to Belgium, where the Unicorn's denizens comment on their missing buddies and Jake's abandoned wife struggles to tend their brain-damaged daughter; and occasional appearances by the ghost of Rickabone, their late wastrel companion, who seems to represent his survivors' darker side. Arresting conceptions and vigorous writing abound, but- -except for an inchoate pattern of ironical allusions to the biblical Jacob (who, unlike his namesake, amassed great wealth and experienced a vision of eternity)—none of this adds up to a coherent novel. The Sorrow of Belgium was almost a masterpiece. Desire is a curiosity that reads like Hugo Claus's American Notes, not yet reshaped into fiction.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-670-86746-2

Page Count: 211

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997

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THE SECRET HISTORY

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.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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OF MICE AND MEN

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define.  Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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