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
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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