An eerie homage to the dystopian genre.
Paganacci (Everything Is Always Perfect, 2018) offers a collection of apocalyptic fiction and poetry.
The author fixates on all things dark, disturbing, and morbid in this series of short stories, interspersed with brief, free-verse poems. He begins with “California,” in which a caretaker for an elderly ex-Navy man and a former showgirl must figure out why they’ve seemingly fled their home. A boy and his Jack Russell terrier inadvertently discover an extraterrestrial portal in “Hole in the World” and a retiree hurts his ankle on a hike and resorts to drastic measures to get out of the desert alive in “Water.” Paganacci sprinkles sci-fi concepts throughout these tales, including inventions, such as an implant that can be used to kill oneself in an emergency, and deadly creatures, including an 8-foot, tentacled terror that cocoons its victims. The author also plays with magic, time travel, and the idea of duplicates. Not everything in the future is necessarily bad, however; one society, for instance, has legalized marijuana, banned prescription drugs, eliminated guns, and eradicated war. The character descriptions throughout this collection are sharp; take Donny, a young man who laments that “I’m good at remembering details but I can’t follow instructions, which makes no sense to me.” The narrator of “Hot Shower” struggles with “depersonalization syndrome,” an inability to recognize himself as human. Instead of an arm and a hand, for instance, he describes “an outgrowth with a hinged flap at the end”; instead of eyes, he has “glassy organs that function as visual sensors.” Paganacci’s poems don’t quite jibe with the short stories’ themes, however, and they add little to the book as a whole. Some lines even seem nonsensical: “An apple being murdered by a bullet / Caught red-handed at the speed of surprised light.” Still, the stories are sufficient reason to read this book.
An eerie homage to the dystopian genre.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 85
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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