A raucous comedy about a hapless, well-endowed innocent.
The picaresque adventures of a young man oddly blessed by nature.
Murphy’s uproarious fiction debut centers on the improbable character of Manas, whom readers meet on the occasion of his birth, being very comfortable in his mother Shadow’s womb and perhaps hesitating since he senses that his father, Walter, is a thuggish, violent brute whose acquaintance he’d rather not make. Manas is Shadow’s first child since her stay in a mental hospital, and even while he’s still a baby, it becomes obvious that he has a rather distinctive physical attribute: a freakishly large male member. “[T]he nurses at the pediatrician’s offices were always present, watching in silence, each time he was brought in for a check-up.” And it’s getting bigger with every passing year. The boy’s father wastes no time in trying to profit from this bounty, but once Manas graduates high school, he runs away to join the circus, where he’s befriended by fellow freaks, including a dwarf named Baby Deadly who tries to dissuade Manas from seeing his enormous member as a curse. “I see it as an astounding gift,” she tells him, “a blessing of Nature bestowed upon you and you alone. We must segue you from a negative paradigm to a more positive one.” Manas and his coterie eventually encounter a wildly inventive cast of eccentric characters, including the ancient Nathaniel Totem Vary—whose Out-of-Context Word-of-God Bible strings together all the portions of the Bible dealing with sex, beatings and murder—and Leander Basalt, the phlegmatic traveling salesman who sells Vary’s book. The novel’s exuberant dialogue and quick pacing perfectly match the sardonic tone Murphy adopts throughout. That tone can be brutal, and the comedy is often sharp and dark, reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (1980). Yet the nihilism is much closer to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), clearly the novel’s progenitor when it comes to Manas and his miraculous endowment. Murphy brings the whole thing to a frenzied, bitterly funny climax in which, among other things, some poetic justice is meted out to loutish Walter.
A raucous comedy about a hapless, well-endowed innocent.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4327-9931-1
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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
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
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