Perturbing, anomalous stories that will bore into readers’ minds.
Hamantaschen’s (You Shall Never Know Security, 2011) latest collection of twisted tales once again explores the dark side of human nature.
Rather appropriately, “Vernichtungsschmerz” kick-starts this book of nine outlandish, unnerving stories. In it, a creature in a dream offers teenage Julia a way to escape the pain of a natural death, a perfect example of the author toying with the horror genre. Creatures are often metaphors; in the opening tale, the reason behind a monster’s arrival takes precedence over a human’s natural urge to shudder or flee. Some stories may show signs of genre convention, but they ultimately unravel in gleefully unconventional ways. In “Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story,” a crazed writer is irate that noted online reviewer Karen hasn’t critiqued his book, yet she may be the one who gets a happy ending. Bryce, meanwhile, in “I’m a Good Person, I Mean Well and I Deserve Better,” makes an unlikely hero, but just because he saves the damsel in distress doesn’t mean he gets the girl. There’s an overwhelming sense of dread among all the characters, be it a general fear of death or, in the case of Miles in “It’s Not Feelings of Anxiety; It’s One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety,” fear that he may not be the family man for Miranda and 18-month-old Craig. At the same time, readers may dread social worker Alex’s learning why his unemployed, constantly pregnant client, Gloria, seems to be well-off in “The Gulf of Responsibility.” While Hamantaschen sometimes subverts garden-variety monsters or villains, a callback to an earlier story in “Oh Abel, Oh Absalom” implies an inexorable, omniscient evil that’s perhaps had its hand in more than just those two tales. Many of the playful titles are a smidge overlong, but the author easily churns out penetrating, somber prose: “So the promise of painless escape went unexplored, so abominable; so abhorrent was that option, as if death would never come unless it was a choice proactively taken.”
Perturbing, anomalous stories that will bore into readers’ minds.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5171-1398-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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