A compilation of genre-spanning short works with behind-the-scenes style nonfictional interludes that chronicle an author’s struggle with drugs, debt and family.
This uniquely structured collection attempts to pull back the curtain on the writing process, using the author’s real-life accounts of working on the individual pieces while dealing with square jobs, family troubles, self-doubt and other demons. In Akley’s (Sweet Pea and the Bumblebee, 2007) world, the biggest monkey on his back is marijuana, along with all the hassles that come with the habit, and his dependency has lead him to as many interesting tales and inconveniences as his other obsession—writing—has. In between children’s stories, miniplays, poetry and prose come glimpses of the numerous hardships, locations and characters that have influenced these works, the collected accounts of a freelance lab technician just trying to make an honest living while publishing his stories and trying to score his next ounce. The book suggests a larger narrative will appear where fact meets fiction, but this ultimately fails, leaving the reader with disparate stories loosely connected by bits of memoir. The short pieces stand fine on their own— “Sweet Pea and the Bumblebee” and “The Candlestick,” both children’s tales, explore similar questions of identity but in different ways—while the bulk of novel’s poetry captures a muted sense of longing, even when just engaging in simple, fun observations. Of the prose, “Repentance” is the standout; replete with vivid imagery, it’s most notable for the subdued, nonjudgmental way it depicts personal interactions, featuring people struggling to make bad decisions that regrettably might be the best ones they can make. Themes like relevance, selfishness and self-interest reoccur throughout, even in the nonfiction passages, but like the book’s multiple religious musings and pop culture references, these feel like window dressings, adding little and rarely explored or expounded upon, just filling space, or in the case of the poems, metered time.
An adequate collection of short stories and poetry, but the author’s commentary doesn't connect the parts into a cohesive narrative.Pub Date: April 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-1432773533
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Outskirts
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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While a few weeks ago it seemed as if Praeger would have a two month lead over Dutton in their presentation of this Soviet best seller, both the "authorized" edition (Dutton's) and the "unauthorized" (Praeger's) will appear almost simultaneously. There has been considerable advance attention on what appears to be as much of a publishing cause celebre here as the original appearance of the book in Russia. Without entering into the scrimmage, or dismissing it as a plague on both your houses, we will limit ourselves to a few facts. Royalties from the "unauthorized" edition will go to the International Rescue Committee; Dutton with their contracted edition is adhering to copyright conventions. The Praeger edition has two translators and one of them is the translator of Doctor Zhivago Dutton's translator, Ralph Parker, has been stigmatized by Praeger as "an apologist for the Soviet regime". To the untutored eye, the Dutton translation seems a little more literary, the Praeger perhaps closer to the rather primitive style of the original. The book itself is an account of one day in the three thousand six hundred and fifty three days of the sentence to be served by a carpenter, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. (Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner.) From the unrelenting cold without, to the conditions within, from the bathhouse to the latrine to the cells where survival for more than two weeks is impossible, this records the hopeless facts of existence as faced by thousands who went on "living like this, with your eyes on the ground". The Dutton edition has an excellent introduction providing an orientation on the political background to its appearance in Russia by Marvin Kalb. All involved in its publication (translators, introducers, etc.) claim for it great "artistic" values which we cannot share, although there is no question of its importance as a political and human document and as significant and tangible evidence of the de-Stalinization program.
Pub Date: June 15, 1963
ISBN: 0451228146
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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Hannah’s sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it.
When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate’s death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully’s long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a high-speed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate’s spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny’s anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton’s liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah’s depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully’s every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter’s bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailer-trash men. Although powerful, Cloud’s largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters.
Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-57721-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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