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
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.
Amid the dystopian collapse of the near future, a musician embarks on a quixotic voyage from the shore of Lake Superior.
There’s both a playfulness and a seriousness of purpose to the latest from the Minnesota novelist, a spirit of whimsy that keeps hope flickering even in times of darkest despair. Things have gone dangerously dark along the North Shore, and likely for the country as a whole. A comet is coming that augurs ill, a pandemic has wreaked havoc with the public health, an autocratic despot and raging populism have made books and booksellers all but treasonous. There are corpses floating in the lake from climate change, and there are numerous instances of people swallowing something that kills them; the dead are generally considered seekers of whatever comes next (which has to be better than this) rather than suicides. As narrator Rainy sets the scene, “The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.” Rainy is a bass player in bar bands, a jack of a variety of trades, and devoted husband to Lark, a bibliophile who runs the local bookstore. Before the collapse of the publishing industry, a cult author had been set to publish a volume with the same title as this novel, and finding one of the few advance copies has been like a holy grail for Lark. Then a copy finds her, courtesy of a fugitive pursued by the powers that be, and whatever tranquility Lark and Rainy had achieved is shattered. Rainy takes to the lake to escape the fugitive’s pursuers and reunite with Lark. He experiences a variety of hardship, challenge, and adventure, yet somehow lives to tell the tale that is this novel.
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780802162939
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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