With a keen ear for the machinations of a teacher’s mind, Watson (Asta in the Wings, 2009) deftly ratchets up the tension in...
Vera Lundy's had a little trouble letting go of her high school demons, so teaching 10th-grade English might not have been the wisest career choice.
When she was a student, Vera kept a notebook detailing all her unsavory thoughts about her classmates, particularly one: "If I could find a way to get rid of Heidi Duplessis, I would. I think first I'd duct-tape her to her car, and then I'd shave off her hair with a pair of clippers. If I could kill her and get away with it, I don't think I'd hesitate.'' Then Heidi was murdered. After one of the other girls stole Vera's notebook, Vera started getting menacing phone calls and was even roughed up, causing her to retreat into herself. Years later, Vera is working on a book about the mystery surrounding Heidi’s death; unfortunately for her, the confessed killer, Ivan Schlosser, died in prison before he could be brought to trial. Now another girl has turned up strangled. She was a student at the posh, independent all-girls school that has hired Vera as a long-term substitute. Vera finds herself drawn to Jensen Willard, her smartest student, a talented if morbid writer who thrives on Vera’s assignment to keep a journal. Intended to help the students draw personal connections to Catcher in the Rye, in Jensen’s hands the journal becomes a window into dark thoughts, indeed. One night, while walking home through the dark park, Vera stumbles upon the body of yet another student—one with whom she had recently argued. As the police investigation proceeds, Vera tries to connect the dots but only succeeds in making herself look more suspicious. And then Jensen disappears, launching Vera on a quest riddled with allusions to Holden Caulfield’s lost days in New York City.
With a keen ear for the machinations of a teacher’s mind, Watson (Asta in the Wings, 2009) deftly ratchets up the tension in this riveting game of cat and mouse.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-525-95437-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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
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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