Worthwhile vignettes for the New Yorker in all of us.
A collection of short fiction set in, and sometimes evocative of, New York.
In his inaugural effort, Lawenda gathers four short stories and two novellas in a disparate collection set against the backdrop of New York, which provides not only a theatrical stage, but mood and tenor. In Magnificent Melinda, the first novella, Michael returns to his family’s summer home on Katogah Lake and remembers the first time he met his uncle’s young bride, Melinda. Then only 14, he was instantly drawn to her untamed spirit. Years later, after Melinda and his uncle Sammy have split, Michael bumps into her in Tribeca, and they quickly begin a torrid romance that eventually concludes, to Michael’s eternal disappointment. In the aftermath of her death, he revisits the scene of their first encounter and grapples with the meaning of the extraordinary power she still has over him. In “Lunch with Louie,” Steve is crushed by the lack of purpose and shame that torment him after he loses his job and can’t find another. He spends his afternoons aimlessly wandering Madison Square Park, and his marriage starts to crumble under the weight of his growing torpor. Then, one day, he bumps into an old business associate experiencing a similar crisis. In the final novella, Translation, Chella flees Colombia to become a translator in New York. She reluctantly turns to prostitution to make ends meet and encounters Anthony, who rekindles her love of art, introduces her to a rarified world of wealth, and restores some hope lost in love itself. Besides the New York locations, the narrative twine that connects these stories is a confrontation with despair as well as the opportunities for redemption within that personal darkness. Lawenda beautifully captures the revitalization that can sometimes spring from a date with the abyss. One could argue that these pieces don’t powerfully capture the inimitable flavor of the city; the mood is wistful and somber in most stories, when a soupçon of humor might have lightened readers’ load. Still, the overall emotional intelligence of the collection is notable, and the unadorned prose delivers its message with a Spartan power.
Worthwhile vignettes for the New Yorker in all of us.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Peppertree Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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