An intriguing tale of a homeless drifter hoping to reinvent his life.
A suicidal young man decides to settle in New York’s subway tunnels with a band of vagrants.
In Mercer’s debut novel, Mays, a medical school dropout, finds himself homeless and broke after a failed suicide attempt. At the hospital, he meets Thomas “T-Bone” Bonicelli, who offers to help him escape without drawing the attention of the nurses. The two meet later at Saint Christopher All Souls Kitchen. After T-Bone finds out about Mays’ financial problems, he tells him, “We can’t have you walking around with no money like you’re some kinda bum on the street.” T-Bone earns cash by participating in “clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry” and medical experiments. After T-Bone invites Mays to live in the “Bat Cave,” his underground home beneath the subway tunnels, Mays come to think of his new companion as a “surrogate quasi-father figure” and discovers that he has “something that had been missing for quite some time: a future.” Mays and T-Bone have their farts tested at a “clinical exercise testing facility,” become prostate exam test subjects for third-year medical students, and even sell their sperm on a weekly basis to avoid becoming destitute. Though Mercer doesn’t ever clearly state his main character’s motivations—why does he decide to trust T-Bone and go along with his schemes?—his strange tale of two men living off the grid is a fresh and vividly rendered take on the alternate lifestyle trope. Some readers may be put off by the author’s light treatment of mental illness and suicide—in one disturbing section, Mays considers all the ways he might try killing himself again—but Mercer’s goal seems to be to push boundaries past the acceptable and into the grotesque. Mays’ quest to find meaning should be familiar to those struggling to find direction in their own lives, but that may not be a good enough reason for readers to stick around for a character whose path and purpose seem to remain mysterious even to the author.
An intriguing tale of a homeless drifter hoping to reinvent his life.Pub Date: March 28, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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