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THICKER THAN MUD

Name: THICKER THAN MUD
Author: Jason Z. Morris

by Jason Z. Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A thoughtful but meandering family tale.

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An archaeologist wrestles with a cascade of emotionally challenging problems and makes a potentially significant historical discovery in this debut novel.

While on an archaeological dig in Israel, Adam Drascher, a professor of religious studies, examines a piece of ceramic collected by an eager graduate student named Maggie. It turns out to be a spectacular find: an eighth-century piece adorned with an ancient Hebrew inscription that refers to a group that called itself the “Healers” and lived in the Holy Land before the Israelites. But Adam receives a troubling call that his grandfather Hank is terribly ill and that he should rush home to Queens. Danny Blumberg—a contemporary of Adam’s who was all but adopted by Hank when he became estranged from his own family—delivers the news, much to Adam’s chagrin, since he always resented the man’s closeness to his grandfather. Hank was like a father to both boys—after Adam’s parents died, he became the child’s custodian. Hank dies and leaves a cassette recording for Adam that reveals his suspicion that Danny is his brother, the result of his father’s adulterous affair. This is information Adam isn’t anxious to disclose. When Danny is arrested for brutally beating up his wife’s lover, Adam twists the truth of what happened to protect him, a loyal move that potentially places him in legal jeopardy, a complex moral conundrum intelligently depicted by Morris. Meanwhile, Adam struggles to make tenure, a predicament only worsened when his mentor, Claudia Renaud, takes sole credit for the artifact they jointly identified. The author artfully blends intriguing civilization history and personal drama—Adam intentionally excavates the former and is compelled by circumstances to confront the latter. His utter exasperation is movingly palpable: “I don’t break bones and put people in the hospital. I don’t conspire. I don’t ambush. I don’t get interrogated by the police, or kidnapped, or whatever the hell this is. But somehow, I’m waist deep in this shit.” While brimming with psychological nuances, the story is unfortunately weighed down by too many detours—a police officer investigating Danny sets Adam up with her niece on a blind date, an unlikely and unnecessary turn of events.

A thoughtful but meandering family tale.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 302

Publisher: Kurti Publishing

Review Posted Online: June 7, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.