Somewhat slow in setting his scenes, Lasdun nonetheless creates a vivid and terrifying account that gains intensity from...
An intricate thriller about a college professor pursued by an unknown enemy, in a well-crafted debut novel from poet and short-story writer Lasdun (Three Evenings, 1992, etc.).
Lawrence Miller gets paid to keep his eyes and ears open. A professor of gender studies at Arthur Clay College in New York, he sits on the college’s sexual harassment committee and reviews complaints dealing with inappropriate behavior among faculty and students. The committee’s proceedings tend to resemble those of a Star Chamber rather than a court of law, and Miller feels perfectly comfortable in bringing private (and anonymous) accusations of his own against certain professors on campus. Although the committee has a pretty free hand, its interventions have occasionally backfired—as in the case of the celebrated Bulgarian poet Bogomil Trumilcik, who denounced the committee and left the college in a huff when he was accused of making undue advances toward his students some years ago. Although the Trumilcik case transpired before Miller’s arrival on campus, strange coincidences have lately made Miller suspicious that Trumilcik may be stalking him, or at least using Miller’s office after-hours: Miller keeps finding inexplicable telephone calls on his bill, and documents by Trumilcik appear and vanish from his computer. Miller also learns that the woman who occupied the office before him was murdered in a bizarre case that has remained unsolved by the police. When Elaine Jordan, another committee member, suddenly disappears, Miller concludes that something is definitely amiss. But who’s the culprit? As Miller’s paranoia mounts, he begins to take the investigation into his own hands, even at one point entering a battered-women’s shelter in drag to pursue a clue. When the answer arrives, it is likely to prove as much a shock to the reader as it is to Miller himself.
Somewhat slow in setting his scenes, Lasdun nonetheless creates a vivid and terrifying account that gains intensity from momentum—and ultimately proves quite surprising in its denouement.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-00336-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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