An earnest, thoughtful story about an unplanned discovery.
Viles tells the story of a couple caught in the middle of a Bigfoot controversy in this debut novel.
In the shadow of Mount St. Helens, widower and self-proclaimed “Bigfoot agnostic” Jake Holly is taking shelter from the rain in the hollow of a Douglas fir when he hears the impossible: two sasquatches lying together. When they discover Jake’s proximity, he reflexively fires his rifle toward them, killing the female and sending the male fleeing, wounded, into the forest. Immediately remorseful, Jake and his horse drag the dead sasquatch back to the road to keep it from scavengers, where Jake’s new girlfriend, Jess O’Reilly, picks them up. Jake and Jess take the body to a friend’s funeral home in Aurora, Washington, and try to figure out how to proceed; a local boy sees them unload the creature and posts about it online. Soon reporters are descending on Aurora; the president of the United States is on the phone; and Jake is arrested for murder on the order of Jess’ father, the district attorney, who disapproves of Jake dating his daughter. Caught up in a cyclone of grief, anxiety, and moral uncertainty, Jake must comport himself in a way that will secure his own freedom, preserve the sasquatch species, and also save his relationship with Jess. Viles writes in a crisp, balanced prose that’s laden with wonderful details, as when he describes the murdered Bigfoot: “She didn’t look like a wild animal, dirt-caked and disheveled from a hard life outdoors, but brought to mind a homely, hardworking mother of six from a mud-puddled trailer park somewhere in the backcountry.” The author attempts to make the story as believable as possible, including historical digressions that explain how a population of sasquatches evolved and survived to the present day. In the end, however, his story is about the ways that people react to the unexpected in their own lives and in the world at large. Although Jake and Jess, as characters, might have benefited from a bit more complexity, they’re generally well drawn, and the plot is satisfying, overall.
An earnest, thoughtful story about an unplanned discovery.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59298-769-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2017
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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