A slim but delightful tale of terror set in transcendentalist New England.
In Kuhl’s gothic horror novel, a man fleeing his past joins a remote commune where things go bump in the night.
In 1844 Connecticut, carpenter Tom Lyman has just bought a membership to Bonaventure Farm, an experimental commune where everyone shares the labor and fruits of the harvest. At the request of the commune’s founder, David Grosvenor, Lyman is renovating the derelict stone house that served as the farm’s original dwelling. No one has lived in it for a century, since the family that built it died out. Lyman takes up residence and sets to work, glad to be far from New York City—and the crimes he secretly committed there. On his first night in the house, however, Lyman wakes to hear the sound of a violin coming from the basement, which, for some reason, has a crossbeam across its door, as if to keep something from escaping. There are also mysterious, thunderlike noises coming from the ground, and no one seems to know their cause. Despite these peculiarities, Lyman settles into life on the farm, cozying up to Grosvenor’s daughter, Minerva, and trying to hide the fact that he isn’t a skilled carpenter. As days pass, however, the secrets of the Bonaventure property—and the secrets of Lyman’s own past—threaten to erode the man’s sanity, particularly after he starts hearing strange whispers. Over the course of this novel, Kuhl’s atmospheric prose evokes the formality of the time period, as when Lyman attempts to convince himself he didn’t hear what he thought he heard: “He only believed he’d heard a voice. Those syllables, like the violin of the first night, were nothing but the strange breezes moving under the house…creating whispers and whistles just as breath does across the lip of a flute.” Kuhl also provides all the familiar elements of gothic horror for fans of that genre—ruins, secrets, preternatural happenings—with some intriguing original mysteries surrounding the setting and the protagonist. The creepiness builds at a swift pace and, at just over 120 pages, the novel ends right where it should.
A slim but delightful tale of terror set in transcendentalist New England.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-94-602483-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Aurelia Leo
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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