A clever contribution to that popular subgenre, the satirical academic novel.
Novelist Farewell (In the Lighthouse, 2012, etc.) gathers together a covey of academics (and one outsider) who are literally on the trail of the mysterious Henry Radcliff, a Victorian novelist.
Radcliff wrote only one book, and there is only one extant copy. (A secretive collector allowed that one copy to be reprinted and then squirreled the original back away.) Brendan Jones, a crude, outspoken American journalist, has written a biography of Radcliff. Dame Agatha Peel, doyenne of British biographers, is working on her own Radcliff biography. The rest are a motley crew—young professorial strivers, mumbling older ones, hangers-on and a mysterious Frenchwoman. The narrator and protagonist is Sarah Bolton, an assistant professor at a backwater college in Ohio, who is pinning her tenure hopes on her feminist Radcliff scholarship. But she becomes more and more conflicted as the tour proceeds and also as she is drawn, against her best instincts, to bearlike philistine Jones. This is as much Sarah’s journey of self-discovery as it is a pursuit of Henry Radcliff. Jones and the egotistical Dame Agatha are of course the perfect foils for one another, and most of the others have their own agendas as they traipse across the continent visiting places that Prince Roniakowski, Radcliff’s romantic hero, had blessed with his presence. These people often confuse fiction and reality, take themselves much too seriously and generally behave like asses. Along the way, the only portrait of Radcliff seems to come to light, and a letter (in his totally illegible handwriting) has been found. More than that, it would be unfair to reveal, except that there is a really startling revelation toward the end, followed, possibly, by a final twist. Farewell is wicked good: The first chapter, for example, is a tour de force in perceptive writing that reveals Sarah despite herself.
A clever contribution to that popular subgenre, the satirical academic novel.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0977850945
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Puddingdale Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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
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