English writer Elliott, a necromancer who dangles metaphysical concepts of Time, Love, and the Divine plus other headachy abstractions, sets her latest morality playground in the ancient city of Jerusalem—a cat's cradle of invisible lines ``ever- shifting between faith and non-faith and wrong faith, past and present, fantasy and the impossibility of truth.'' As in Elliott's Dr. Gruber's Daughter (1988), events and characters circle around a boardinghouse—here, that of Eugenia Muna, for whom Time is a loop (Mohammed on his flying fanciful steed was a lovely sight; Proust's diet was irritating; and Freud was on for a brief visit) and who cooks (like Countess Olga in Gruber) awful offal, but she will leave earth's carrion, at the close, to cook a sacred carp, which, it is said, harbors souls. Among the pilgrims of various stripe: bright-haired Daisy, for whom the richness of the city is ``like someone with a temperature''; crane-limbed Thomas Curtis, following the path of a 17th-century skeptic who ``fell into faith''; the Reverend Pooley, occasional aesthete and Anglican; and, in the garden, ``Miss Mary'' (Mary/Isis/Demeter—well, you get the idea). At Magdalene's brothel/cafe three friends meet: Rabbi Solomon; Hamil the minor imam; and Fedor, the man-without-a-past and adorer of Eugenia, his shelter and home. Meanwhile, two unhappy travelers to Jerusalem, set to rescue Thomas and Daisy respectively, are in hellish transit—in bleak and deadly places. On earth there are storms and rumors of more wars, a Crucifixion and a Birth. Lovers find one another, and love, as always, is ringed with hope, among old stones, a ``real world of telegrams and anger,'' and gates through which three Messiahs (probably one anyway, says Eugenia) may enter. A lavishly allusive narrative that entertains tantalizing possibility, identity switches, and brightly chattering heads. Admirers of Elliott's teasing wit and wisdom will find more here.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-340-57115-2
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
New York is colonized by giant talking canines in newcomer Bakis's wry variation on the traditional shaggy dog story. Imagination is the key here. We need to understand that at the end of the 19th century a crazed German biologist named Augustus Rank performed a succession of medical experiments that resulted in a weird genetic mutation of his subjects and created a race of ``monster dogs''—giant rottweilers and Dobermans who can speak and walk on their hind legs. After living for more than a hundred years in the seclusion of a remote Canadian settlement called Rankstadt, they are forced to move in the year 2008 to New York (where 150 of them take up residence at the Plaza Hotel) when Rankstadt is destroyed. In their 19th-century garb—Prussian military uniforms for the ``men,'' bustles for the ``women''—they cut impressive figures on the streets of Manhattan, where they quickly become celebrities and philanthropists. At Christmas they parade down Fifth Avenue in sleighs, and shortly after their arrival they construct an enormous Bavarian castle on the Lower East Side. When an NYU coed named Cleo Pira writes about them for a local newspaper, the dogs adopt her as their spokesperson and bring her into the inner life of their society. From Cleo's perspective the dogs are benign, quaint, and deeply tragic, and the more fascinated she becomes by their history—both as they relate it to her and as she discovers it for herself through Rank's own archives—the darker and more doomed their society appears. By the time Cleo has learned the secrets contained in Rank's past, it's too late to save his descendants, who have unknowingly brought about their own destruction. Serious enough, but also funny and imaginative: a vivid parable that manages to amuse even as it perplexes and intrigues.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-18987-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Fans weary of King's recent unwieldy tomes can rest easy: his newest is slim, slick, and razor-keen. His first novel without supernatural elements outside of the Richard Bachman series, this psychological terror tale laced with pitch-black humor tells the nerve-jangling story of a best-selling author kidnapped and tortured by his "number one fan." King opens on a disorienting note as writer Paul Sheldon drifts awake to find himself in bed, his legs shattered. A beefy woman, 40-ish Annie Wilkes, appears and feeds him barbiturates. During the hazy next week, Paul learns that Annie, an ex-nurse, carried him from a car wreck to her isolated house, where she plans to keep him indefinitely. She's a spiteful misanthrope subject to catatonic fits, but worships Paul because he writes her favorite books, historical novels featuring the heroine "Misery." As Annie pumps him with drugs and reads the script of his latest novel, also saved from the wreck, Paul waits with growing apprehension—he killed off Misery in this new one. tn time, Annie rushes into the room, howling: she demands that Paul write a new novel resurrecting Misery just for her. He refuses until she threatens to withhold his drugs; so he begins the book (tantalizing chunks of which King seeds throughout this novel). Days later, when Annie goes to town, Paul, who's now in a wheelchair, escapes his locked room and finds a scrapbook with clippings of Annie's hobby: she's a mass-murderer. Up to here, King has gleefully slathered on the tension: now he slams on the shocks as Annie returns swinging an axe and chops off Paul's foot. Soon after, off comes his thumb; when a cop looking for Paul shows up, Annie lawnmowers his head. Burning for revenge, Paul finishes his novel, only to use the manuscript as a weapon against his captor in the ironic, ferocious climax. Although lacking the psychological richness of his best work, this nasty shard of a novel with its weird autobiographical implications probably will thrill and chill King's legion of fans. Note: the publisher plans an unprecedented first printing of one-million copies.
Pub Date: June 8, 1987
ISBN: 0451169522
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
