Richly described, if uneven, tales with some memorable characters.
This second installment of a series offers more interconnected short stories about madcap outsiders who live in the fictional Green Valley.
In The Ballad of Jinx Jenkins (2018), Sommers introduced an enigmatic vagrant whom the people of Green Valley had proclaimed an omen of bad luck. In the opening of this sequel, Jinx stands with a noose around his neck, facing death. Similarly, Green Valley is in the death grip of the dreaded BigCorp, an avaricious private company intent on gobbling up land and pushing Sniff, a highly addictive drug, to locals. In the tale “The Life of Jinx Jenkins,” it is revealed that Jinx once worked for BigCorp, and his downfall was initiated by its future CEO, Jason Big, who claims credit for the protagonist’s SkyTram designs. Other stories tell tales of the people of Green Valley—from its disgruntled blue-collar workers, such as Grackle and Crag who toil in a sweet factory, to its wannabee superheroes, including “The Errant Knight,” an offbeat Don Quixote, and “The Starling,” a female hacker intent on implanting a virus in the BigCorp servers. The pervading theme in this collection is the corrosive nature of capitalist enterprise. Sommers poignantly describes the fallout experienced as a result of BigCorp’s industrial ventures: “The problem was the mess the smog left behind, staining every tree, building, and car in a gray-green tint. A thick, sticky film seeped into one’s consciousness, their will, their sense of being.” In Jinx, the author astutely creates a complex character whose deterioration mirrors that of the valley. Imagery of Jinx decaying on the streets is graphic and impactful: “The grape-sized infection on his knuckle throbbed so hard it split itself open.” Sommers’ introduction of various superheroes is less successful. The Errant Knight’s foppishly archaic diction injects some levity: “I shall have the most immaculate cut of meat you have…adorned with your freshest comestibles.” But the author gets caught up in recounting each superhero’s backstory, which, along with the group’s predictable crime-fighting capers, becomes tediously repetitive. Sommers also sometimes uses racial slurs needlessly: “Wops and Spooks and Spics.” This volume displays many of the markings of a talented writer, although there are some off-putting elements.
Richly described, if uneven, tales with some memorable characters.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948309-92-9
Page Count: 253
Publisher: Transmundane Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
