An endearing, if protracted, novel of self-discovery.
Smith tells the story of a gay man’s tumultuous search for love in this erotic debut novel.
Wilson James doesn’t have much guidance while growing up in a dysfunctional African-American family in Los Angeles. His parents are split up: his father is a distant alcoholic and his mother is a woman given easily to fits of rage. Wilson can’t go to them with his everyday problems, let alone his secret, blossoming attraction to men. After an eye-opening tryst at age 13 with his father’s 24-year-old cousin, Wilson becomes certain that the love he needs can only come from other males—specifically, grown men with the experience to guide him through the unknown territory of pleasure. So begins his search for satisfaction, although his youth and vulnerability often place him in situations in which older men are able to take advantage of him in ways he doesn’t always understand. As Wilson learns to navigate adulthood, his quest for affection becomes a journey of personal growth in which he seeks to lay to rest the ghosts of his childhood and find a way to engender love—not only in the hearts of others, but also in himself. Smith is a sensual writer, executing every scene in lusty, baroque prose. Unfortunately, this lyricism often leads to overwrought passages that confuse rather than elucidate: “Fragile by circumstance, I was a slave to poignant inclusiveness, and my innocence preyed upon by trusted foes, as a naïve participant sworn into darkened territory.” Wilson and his primary love interests are well-drawn, and Smith teases out enough emotional investment to carry readers through to the end. That said, the novel would have benefited from a bit more compression; its 467 pages might have been stronger at a lean 300. On the whole, however, there’s a charm to Wilson’s voice and journey, his ability to find high drama in the commonplace, and his attempts to wring beauty from often grim (and sometimes grimy) surroundings.
An endearing, if protracted, novel of self-discovery.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5089-0788-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you’d expect from Palahniuk.
The latest comic outrage from Palahniuk (Choke, 2001, etc.) concerns a lethal African poem, an unwitting serial killer, a haunted-house broker, and a frozen baby. In other words, the usual Palahniuk fare.
Carl Streator is a grizzled City Desk reporter whose outlook on life has a lot to do with years of interviewing grief-stricken parents, spouses, children, victims, and survivors. His latest investigation is a series of crib deaths. A very good reporter, one thing he’s got is an eye for detail, and he notices that there’s always a copy of the same book (Poems and Rhymes Around the World) at the scene of these deaths. In fact, more often than not, the book is open to an African nursery rhyme called a “culling chant.” A deadly lullaby? It sounds crazy, but Carl discovers that simply by thinking about someone while reciting the poem he can knock him off in no time at all. First, his editor dies. Then an annoying radio host named Dr. Sara. It’s too much to be a coincidence: Carl needs help—and fast, before he kills off everyone he knows. He investigates the book and finds that it was published in a small edition now mainly held in public libraries, so he begins by tracking down everyone known to have checked the book out. This brings him to the office of Helen Hoover Boyle, a realtor who makes a good living selling haunted houses—and reselling them a few months later after the owners move out. A son of Helen’s died of crib death about 20 years ago, and she’s reluctant to talk to Carl until he gains the confidence of her Wiccan secretary, Mona Sabbat. Together, Carl, Helen, Mona, and Mona’s ecoterrorist/scam-artist boyfriend Oyster set out across the country to find and destroy every one of the 200-plus remaining copies of Poems and Rhymes. But can Carl (and Helen) forget the chant themselves? Pandora never did manage to get her box shut, after all.
Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you’d expect from Palahniuk.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-50447-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
Thriller fans will find so much space devoted to Gia and Jake’s sexual acrobatics that little time is left for the plot to...
A small Tennessee mountain town is awash in sex and scandal in Belle’s first novel.
Gia Andrews, a disaster relief worker, is also a convicted murderer’s daughter. Her father, Ray, was convicted of killing his wife and Gia’s stepmother, Ella Mae, and sentenced to life in prison. But Ray is dying, and prison officials are releasing him on compassionate grounds; Gia’s uncle Cal, a prominent lawyer, has recruited her to return home from Kenya to care for her dad in his home in Rogersville. Despite the fact that she hasn’t seen her father since she left many years ago, she returns, believing her brother, Bo, and sister, Lexi, will help her, but she finds that neither wants anything to do with their father. Her nearest allies turn out to be the home-care worker Uncle Cal has hired, Fannie, and the new man she meets, a bar-and-grill owner named Jake. When Gia meets a law professor planning to write a book about wrongful convictions, he tells her he believes Ray didn’t kill Ella Mae and that Cal, who was Ray’s attorney, didn’t mount much of a defense. After looking into these allegations, Gia discovers her stepmother had an affair with another man and wonders whether her father could be innocent after all. While trying to unravel the mystery of who really killed Ella Mae, things heat up between Gia and Jake, and suddenly the mystery takes a whole new direction. Belle’s a smooth writer whose characters are vibrant and truly reflect the area where the novel is set, but the plot—while clever—takes a back seat to Gia’s and Ella Mae’s separate, but equally steamy, sexual exploits.
Thriller fans will find so much space devoted to Gia and Jake’s sexual acrobatics that little time is left for the plot to develop.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1722-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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