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
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
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.
Truth and deception clash in this tale of the Holocaust.
Udo Graf is proud that the Wolf has assigned him the task of expelling all 50,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece. In that city, Nico Krispis is an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose blue eyes and blond hair deceive, but whose words do not. Those who know him know he has never told a lie in his life—“Never be the one to tell lies, Nico,” his grandfather teaches him. “God is always watching.” Udo and Nico meet, and Udo decides to exploit the child’s innocence. At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer. They are sending us to Poland. We will have new homes. And jobs.” The lad doesn’t know any better, so he helps persuade reluctant Jews to board the train to hell. “You were a good little liar,” Udo later tells Nico, and delights in the prospect of breaking the boy’s spirit, which is more fun and a greater challenge than killing him outright. When Nico realizes the horrific nature of what he's done, his truth-telling days are over. He becomes an inveterate liar about everything. Narrating the story is the Angel of Truth, whom according to a parable God had cast out of heaven and onto earth, where Truth shattered into billions of pieces, each to lodge in a human heart. (Obviously, many hearts have been missed.) Truth skillfully weaves together the characters, including Nico; his brother, Sebastian; Sebastian’s wife, Fannie; and the “heartless deceiver” Udo. Events extend for decades beyond World War II, until everyone’s lives finally collide in dramatic fashion. As Truth readily acknowledges, his account is loaded with twists and turns, some fortuitous and others not. Will Nico Krispis ever seek redemption? And will he find it? Author Albom’s passion shows through on every page in this well-crafted novel.
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780062406651
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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